


La Grande Évasion

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume III [4]
Category: 17th Century CE RPF, DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Consensual Kink, Cunning Plan, Dumas and Maquet are so proud, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Farce, Historical Accuracy, M/M, Multi, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:52:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We arrive in <i>Twenty Years After</i> era right in time to plot the escape of the duke de Beaufort from prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You don't know how much we've suffered.
> 
> Also, Happy Halloween!!! This is soooo spooky!

**Paris, May 1648**

I had made my return to Paris on the wings of Eurus, metaphorically speaking. The East Wind blew a gentle breath to spur on my carriage and horses as they rattled over muddy roads, alongside which daffodils sprang into bloom. They turned their faces towards Helios, blinking with golden Narcissus-eyes into the celestial light.

After five years in exile, I had found the city changed and buzzing like an angry beehive. Alas, the hive had a new queen. Born from the waters of the Ebro, my kinswoman wore the royal regalia of the uncrowned queen of Paris with the fluvial elegance of the Bourbon naiad. The duchesse de Longueville had taken the court in storm just as she had taken Aramis as her lover, whose predilection for powerful, beautiful women had been a source of great delight to me for many decades, for each of my own incarnations had been more powerful and more beautiful than the last.

Was I powerful still? Reclining in an easy chair among the guests of Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s Société du samedi, I chatted idly about a recent play penned by La Scudéry’s brother Georges, which was reputed to be the most melodramatic and dolorous affair, while my thoughts strayed to the affairs of Paris. As the star of my cousin rose, my own was rumoured to sink into obscurity. Aramis, ever the pragmatic, ambitious creature of the night, had attached himself to my Bourbon cousin with the unerring instinct of a born predator. I had not seen him since my return to France. From what I’d heard, he had barricaded behind the walls of piousness and power of the Jesuit convent in Noisy-le-Sec, concealed, protected, and ready to strike like a spider in its web. The strings he pulled from that bastion of virtue were like subterranean rivers: invisible currents of power that criss-crossed the lands.

I had not seen Aramis since my return, but I sensed his presence in the buzz that made the Parisian air quiver with energy, like a pack of hounds when the hunt was about to commence. He knew that I had been pardoned and permitted to leave my exile, yet he had not come to Paris to pay me a visit. Aramis, who had been my acolyte and ally, neglected the chance to realign forces with me once again. Oh, she was rich, my Bourbon cousin, and he knew how to induce her to share her wealth with him: I knew that better than anyone. Rather than pursuing an alliance with him straightaway, I would bide my time until my plans were fully formed and I knew in what way I could benefit from Aramis’ good fortune.

For now, I knew another man whose assistance would be invaluable.

The door opened, and the comte de La Fère entered Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s salon, resplendent as ever in dark blue, with a wide lace collar and a magnificent burgundy-red plume in his hat. He bowed to our hostess, exchanged compliments with several of the guests, and strode over to my chair, smiling as he walked. His eyes gleamed with that light that I knew so well, and I knew that his body thrummed with the same energy that tingled in my own loins.

“Madame la duchesse,” he said in that beautiful honeyed voice of his and bowed, kissing my hand. “You look more radiant than ever. The air of Paris becomes you.”

I trailed the feathers of my fan over the back of his hand and indicated the chair next to mine. “Please sit.” He sat. “And pull your chair closer to mine.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” He obeyed nevertheless. “There may be talk.”

“Everyone will assume you are my lover,” I said with a smile.

“And the speculations don’t bother you?”

“People will admire my impeccable taste. And envy me my good fortune.” I admired him from the highly polished boots of black leather topped with lace, through the elegant leather belt, to the exquisitely coiffed hair. “I see you have started to go grey, comte,” I said. “It suits you.”

He lifted his hand unconsciously as though to pat his hair, and lowered it again. “Grimaud,” he said, smiling. “He had badgered me until I permitted him to powder my hair before releasing me into society.”

“It must be difficult, not to age,” I said pensively. “Aramis doesn’t age, of course, but he has… other ways to pretend that he is affected by the passage of time.”

“That he has.”

For a while, we looked at each other, feasting our eyes on each other’s beauty. The grey streaks in his dark hair lent him a distinguished air, even though his skin was smooth and flawless as ever, and his large, luminous eyes reflected Olympian light. I smiled behind my fan. Being rumoured to be the mistress of the aloof comte de La Fère, the living, breathing embodiment of nobility and refinement, was flattering to the same extent as being his mistress was gratifying. He handed me a glass of wine and leaned back in his chair. His slender, long-fingered hand was draped elegantly over the armrest, the lace of his ruff a delightful contrast to the beautifully sculpted tendons and bones. Suddenly, a memory flashed in my mind: Aramis, curled up against my side, describing his lover’s beauty. ‘His hands were my despair,’ he had said. It would appear that the count had learned to take better care of his mortal vessel since his return from the sea.

“Are you done, Madame?” Athos’ eyes were smiling at me with heart-melting tenderness. “I believe there are more important concerns that should occupy us tonight.”

“Do you have an answer for me, count?”

He inclined his head with a smile. “I do.”

“Is it yes?”

“It is.”

“I am glad!” I lowered my fan to show him my mouth in a smile. “Have you also you spoken with your confessor?”

“Not yet.”

“But you will?”

“Most certainly. I believe I shall see him shortly.”

“Do you find that M. de Scudéry paints a faithful portrait of country life, M. le comte?” I had raised my voice, for a group of poets had approached us and stood within earshot. “I believe you, as a connoisseur of the rural idyll, are uniquely suited to judge it.”

“Alas, Madame, I am no authority on the theatre,” he said with a bow. “All I can say is that tulips are not in bloom in September, which, I believe, the play implies.”

The poets glanced askance at us, and I said quickly, before anyone could intrude on our conversation: “Ah, but, Monsieur, the tulips are merely a metaphor. You must not judge a piece of fiction by the poetic license that it takes, that way madness lies.” I leaned towards him, almost close enough to touch, and his gaze dropped to my décolleté.

“Thank you, Madame,” Athos said, quite earnestly. “I shall take your advice to heart.” He tilted his head and dropped his voice to a low purr. “This is a very compromising position, duchesse. Tomorrow, all of Paris will gossip about your latest conquest.”

I affected a twinkling laugh. “As long as they are busy gossiping about this,” I trailed the feathers of my fan over his arm. “They will not speculate about the… other matter.”

“Forgive me, Madame, but I believe that you have always been known to conduct your cabals with your lovers.”

“Ah!” I laughed. “Yes. But – forgive me, count – but those lovers were courtiers, ambitious men and political strategists. You are neither.”

“I understand. You’re using the rustic cavalier to hide behind. Well, I am happy to be of some use to you.”

“You are of much more use to me than that, as well you know.”

Athos blushed. “You still require my servant, then?” he asked, with a smile half bashful, half saucy.

“If you would be so kind.”

“When do you need him?”

“As soon as possible. The duke’s jailer would be delighted to employ a trustworthy guard to keep an eye on his highness.”

“Grimaud is in Paris. I can send him to present himself at Vincennes tomorrow.”

“That is well. Will he be able to make the duke hate him?”

“With admirable ease.”

“You speak with great conviction.”

“Born out of experience, I assure you.”

“Indeed? I always believed Grimaud to be most devoted to you, count.”

“Devoted, yes. And as infuriating as only the most loyal of servants can be.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I said, thinking of my faithful La Lunaire, to whose fierce devotion I owed my present incarnation. It was she who had performed the ritual forty-eight years ago and exchanged an infant of Rohan for one of the Loire. Alas, she might have resembled a trebuchet in form, that trusty femme de chambre of mine, but her spirit and lifespan were that of a human. My next rebirth would be in the hands of another. Fortunately, Kitty’s devotion was indubitable, and she had never given any indication, as some women do, of holding a particularly sentimental view of infants.

“How long will it take Grimaud to fulfil his mission?”

“Oh, I believe he will make the duke detest him from the moment his highness sets eyes on him. Grimaud has a special talent, which he has carefully honed over centuries. A few days should suffice. Let us say ten days: it is a nice round number and it will be enough time for Grimaud’s exploits and the duke’s hatred of him to become known throughout Vincennes. When they see that Grimaud is hated and feared by Beaufort, the jailers will trust him to keep the duke under lock and key and reduce their own vigilance. Then, phase two can commence.”

“Will Grimaud be able to gauge the right moment when to reveal his true colours to the duke?”

“You can rely on it.”

“That is well. Now, count,” I raised my voice again and trilled excitedly: “An evening in the theatre before you take leave of Paris again? I would be delighted!”

He picked up the clue without batting an eyelid. “I will send my carriage for you, Madame. I hope you will do me the honour of supping with me as well?”

“With the greatest of pleasure.” I inclined my head regally. “But for now, count, I beg you to leave me, for I see my belle-mère coming in and I am desirous to discuss certain family matters with her.”

Athos rose, bowed and joined the group of poets, who were debating the merits of the English playwright Shakespeare – a discussion into which he entered with much esprit and, from what I could make out, considerable knowledge of the Bard’s oeuvre. Meanwhile, my father’s second wife, Marie de Montbazon, approached me with her most charming smile. I smiled back just as charmingly. Ten years younger than myself, my stepmother had born my father a son from whose offspring I might want to benefit in future. It was important to be on good terms with family members who continued the bloodline of the House of Rohan (my own daughters having both become abbesses, I could not count on them to supply me with an infant when the time would come).

“I believe you are impatient to see a certain person again, belle-mère,” I said to Marie de Montbazon after we had exchanged salutations and pleasantries. My father’s wife cast down her eyes to hide the gleam that set them alight and fanned herself with fierce determination.

“The welcome party has been arranged,” she told me in a voice that was almost melodious enough to belong to a nymph, even though she was a mere mortal. My father had shown excellent taste in choosing the young Marie d’Avaugour as his wife; she, in turn, had shown excellent taste in choosing the duke de Beaufort as her lover. Five years had the lovers been now separated, as the duke languished in Vincennes. It was time to reunite the tender, devoted hearts.

“Fifty cavaliers will be at the ready to welcome our old friend on his arrival,” she continued. “All that is needed now is a reliable person to infiltrate Vincennes and gain the duke’s trust.” And, raising her voice, she said, “Oh, Madame! You have to read Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s novel! It is simply sublime!”

“Thank you, belle-mère,” I said, “I value your opinion greatly, as you know. And I, in turn, can assure you,” I dropped my voice to a whisper again, “That the reliable person has been found. He can be with the duke tomorrow, if you so wish.”

“Oh, please!” my stepmother cried out, overcome by excitement that made blood rush to her cheeks most becomingly. She bit her lip and hid her face behind her fan, communicating her joy merely through the language of her expressive eyes. “Yes,” she continued, picking up the thread of our literary discussion again, “it is _the_ most excellent adventure... which our dear hostess tells in her novel. The excitement over reading it has been keeping me awake for many nights.”

I laughed. “I can’t wait to see for myself. I have been sadly deprived of any excitements of that kind for the last five years and am quite out of the loop as far as the recent… publications are concerned. But I am ready to immerse myself in the world of literature again.”

“Yes, I know you have always been the most voracious reader, Madame,” Marie de Montbazon said.

“As are we all,” I said with a gracious smile. “Is this not the reason why we are here? Speaking of which,” I raised my voice again and glanced pointedly in the direction of Athos, who was still talking to the poets. “Are you acquainted with M. le comte de La Fère? He is a very dear friend of mine.” My stepmother’s fine eyes kindled as she looked Athos up and down from behind her fan.

“Not yet.”

“I assure you he is as interested in… literary pursuits as I am,” I told her. “He has come to Paris with the express wish to acquire a rare and elusive volume. His trusted and most devoted servant is even now waiting for orders to go to the place where the folio is stored. All that he requires is-”

“Money,” my stepmother interjected. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

“And written instructions,” I added. “So that the person whose trust our messenger is to gain knows that he has been sent by a friend.”

Marie de Montbazon nodded slowly. “I understand. A note can be written even now, for I see our hostess has provided a desk with paper and pens. Will it reach the right hands?”

“Of that I can assure you,” I promised. “I shall wrap it into my handkerchief and present it as a token to my friend the comte de La Fère.”

My stepmother rose, walked to the desk and wrote a few lines. When she returned to me, her vacated seat was taken by our hostess. Marie de Montbazon greeted La Scudéry charmingly and handed me a quaint billet, sealed with her ring. “With my warmest recommendations, Madame, ” she said. “The list of books you asked me for. Some of them I would very much enjoy to read again.”

“I’m sure you will, very soon,” I said, slipping the note into my glove, where it was to wait until an opportunity would present itself to pass it on to Athos, who, in turn, would give it to Grimaud. “We were talking about your novel, Mademoiselle,” I said, turning now to La Scudéry. “Do you not find it regrettable that it is your brother’s name that will appear on the title page?” I asked her, for the novel was credited to Georges, rather than Madeleine de Scudéry.

La Scudéry shrugged. “Look at him, rattling his sabre and buckling his swash,” she said, pointing at the tall man, whose enormous moustache hid the lower half of his face, from behind her fan. “Public recognition is so important to them, the poor boys. I will always have the satisfaction that everybody _knows_ that those words truly belong to me. And,” she added with a glint in her eyes that gave her the appearance of a tiger-cat, “I will also have the satisfaction to be the author of the longest novel ever written. Which is what I fully intend to do.”

“An admirable plan!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands. “Mademoiselle de Scudéry, you have your greatest supporter in me.”

“Thank you, Madame la duchesse,” the authoress said with a smile and with a bow of her head. “You are most gracious – just as your cousin, the duchesse de Longueville. She, too, has been most generous with her support and her encouragement, so much so that I have dedicated the work to her.”

“Delightful,” I said with a broad, dazzling smile. “I am sure Madame de Longueville appreciates the gesture.”

To my left, the group of poets stirred. I glanced up and my eyes met those of Athos, who had turned his head to look at me. The expression in his eyes was such that my knees trembled even though I was sitting down, and a sudden blush blossomed in my cheeks, as if I were a young girl. I hid behind my fan; I lowered my eyes. I returned my attention to Mademoiselle de Scudéry. I trembled at the thought of supper and theatre. Oh, he truly was of divine stock. I knew Athos to be charming and sagacious. Occasionally, that man whose uniformity of temper was only ever swayed in the throes of passion, lifted the veil for a brief moment and granted me a glimpse of the Olympian; a son worthy to be the Thunderous Father’s heir.

It was in moments such as these that I knew what Aramis had meant when he had called Athos his god.

***

Marie’s bedroom in the Hôtel de Luynes was lit by the glow of dozens of candles. Since touch was forbidden to us, being able to see and admire each other’s beauty remained an important element of our couplings. We had shed our cloaks and hats and she ran her gloved hand over the vertebrae of my neck, her coral lips glistening like seashells. Were it not for my dear step-mother’s rather Shakespearean ideas about her daughter’s honor, I would have been kissing Marie right then. Instead, I reached into her hair and pulled out the pins holding it up, so that it could fall over her shoulders in a voluminous cape quite rare for a woman her age.

“You’re breathtaking,” I whispered.

“I have something to show you,” she whispered back.

It was a small chest sitting atop a stool with an ornate Oriental design. She unlatched the small lock and opened the lid, presenting the contents to me with a look of unashamed complacency. I looked into the box, then back at Marie, then back into the box, and laughed.

“I thought you’d enjoy them,” she purred next to me. “I understand you’re quite the connoisseur of the time-honored phalloi tradition.”

Laid out neatly along the velvet that lined the inside of the chest was a collection of cocks. Ivory cocks, bronze cocks, wooden cocks, and when I say cocks, I do mean penises rendered with such artistry and detail that my hand almost shied from reaching out to grasp them. At last, having gravitated to one that most resembled me in size and shape, I lifted it up to admire the workmanship closer.

“Extraordinary!” I exclaimed. “Look at these veins, Marie! Look at the curvature! Who modeled for these?”

She laughed, resting her head upon my shoulder and letting her own gloved fingers stroke next to my own along the shaft of the ivory phallus.

“They really are finely rendered. You know I do not shy away from spending top coin on fine art.”

“Minx,” I breathed into her hair. “These are the dicks of your past lovers. Where is Aramis?”

She giggled into my sleeve. “Aramis is immortal. I had not felt the need to have him so well preserved.”

“And who am I holding in my hand right now?” I waved the sizable cock in front of her unrepentant face.

“For tonight? Let’s pretend it’s you.” Her breath along my cheek sent shivers into my loins and my real cock gave a twitch of approbation.

I turned towards her, willing my blood to slow down in its pooling. I had not been with her in five years while she had lived in exile, and I wanted to take my time to really treasure our reunion. The fact that she had brought out her box of toys pleased me greatly, but I had also spent time thinking about all the things I wanted to do with her. To her.

“Call for Kitty,” I said, quietly, pressing the tip of the ivory cock to her pink lips. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow and parted her mouth. I watched with increasing excitement as her tongue peeked out and swirled around the head of the toy. “Call her in.”

Marie rang the small bell and Kitty appeared shortly.

“Yes, Madame?”

Marie looked at me for further instruction.

“Take off her dress,” I said to the soubrette, who looked at her mistress with stupefaction.

“Do as you’re told, Kitty dear,” Marie smiled at me.

I went over to one of the easy chairs, and reclined in it, watching through half-lidded eyes as Kitty worked at unlacing her mistress and helping her out of the multitudes of layers that had hidden her divine form. The ivory cock of Marie’s _amant inconnu_ was still grasped in my hand, and I absentmindedly let my thumb run over the ridges of its bulging veins as I watched all the layers fall away under Kitty's expert hands.

“The corset too,” I instructed from my temporary throne.

From where I sat, I could see Marie’s exposed arms covered in goosebumps. She had removed her riding gloves and had not yet put on the long, silk gloves she wore on these occasions. Every inch of her exposed, alabaster skin appeared to glow in the candle light.

“Madame?” Kitty asked again, uncertain, and waited for Marie to nod approval as she began to unlace the corset.

“What are you thinking, Athos?” she asked, her voice trembling with excitement and anticipation.

“Tonight,” I said, “I wish to be with the nymph, not with the duchess.” Both women looked at me: one with eyes full of desire, the other with eyes full of apprehension. I wondered whether Kitty and Grimaud ever had occasion to bond over the folly of this affair. “Take everything off, Kitty,” I commanded.

“Do as he says,” Marie echoed and her breasts heaved with a gasp of arousal.

At last she stood before me, wearing nothing by the cascades of her curls that fell wildly onto her shoulders and over her breasts.

“You may leave,” I nodded at the soubrette, who curtsied and, with another look at her mistress, took her exit.

“Athos,” Marie’s voice was like a whispering of waves. “This is highly irregular.”

“My Gods,” I exhaled. “You’re gorgeous.” I walked up to her, circling her in a manner reminiscent of a predator stalking his prey, until I came to rest before her. I moved her hair out of the way, exposing her heavy breasts and hardening nipples to my gaze and the cool air of the room. “It is a crime to confine all this beauty beneath the layers of silks and whale bone.”

“Athos,” she shivered and I pressed her into my body, wrapping my arms around her exposed flesh. “This is…”

“Still technically cheating,” I reassured her and felt her relax into my arms. “Only one of us needs to be fully clothed for it not to count as touching.” She laughed into the ruffles of my collar and pressed her hand into the hardness now all too evident inside my breeches. “You said you are not used to submitting,” I mumbled into her hair, “but I find that once you do submit, it can be rather liberating.”

“Speaking from experience,” she sauced me and I scooped her up into my arms. “Ah!”

“I’m going to have my way with you tonight, Madame.” I carried her over to her bed and placed her down on top of the coverlet. “I’m going to really enjoy myself, I suspect,” I smiled, letting my gloved hands run the gamut of her naked and trembling body. She whimpered and leaned into my touch.

“I _have_ missed you,” she purred and bit her lips as my hands continued to map the curves of her body.

I hovered over her, now and then letting my breath ghost over her skin, alternating the pressure of my fingers against her soft flesh from gentle to rough. She moved in fluvial currents under my ministrations.

“Athos, _please_.”

“Yes, Marie. I’ll give you want you want.”

“Well, sadly, not entirely,” she pouted, still youthfully charming despite the passing years.

I reached back and picked up the ivory toy from where it lay on the bed and traced it up from the dip of her belly button over the velvet-soft skin of her stomach and up into the valley between her breasts, where they lay fallen to the sides, parted with the same symmetry as her thighs. She sighed and licked her coral lips. I pressed my other hand into the valley between her thighs and her lips parted around a soft moan.

“Make it wet for me,” I requested.

It was an unnecessary curtesy. Marie was water, she was always wet for me, but still, I rather enjoyed watching the head and then part of the shaft disappear inside her delectable mouth. She moaned around the toy, a sound so raw and filthy that my actual cock threatened to burst and cursed me from its confines.

“ _Fuck_ , Marie,” I breathed out. Her eyes shone brazenly at me as she gave the ivory cock one final, long, wet lick.

“Wet enough for you, my lord?”

My free hand grasped her hip and then slapped it. A wave of arousal sent her almost flying off the bed and into my arms. “Woah there, be careful, my beautiful nymph.” She bit her lip again while I catalogued her reaction for future use. “Hang on to the headboard, Marie,” I said, “It’s going to be a vigorous ride.”

I wanted to bend over her, to run my lips and tongue over all that exposed, heated skin. Her aroma alone made my head spin and my cock ache angrily. Instead, I brought the toy to my own lips and pressed my mouth over the head, imagining I could taste her tongue along the ivory.

“Oh, Poseidon…” she sighed. “Oh, this gives me ideas.”

I smirked. “One idea at a time, lover.”

I used my hands to spread her thighs and wrap her legs around my hips, where she had immediately latched on like an experienced rider. My gloved fingers trailed over the folds of her labia, pressed against the hidden pearl of her clit. I could feel her trembling through the kid-leather just as I could feel the heat radiating from her body. She writhed into my touch and held on to the headboard, just as I had bid her.

“Do it!” she ordered, ever the general of the battlefield that was our lovemaking.

“Yes, Madame,” I replied and ran the cool shaft of the ivory over her straining cunt. She bucked against me and begged for it more while I used the head to tease along her throbbing clit.

“Athos!”

“So impatient,” I muttered.

“Impatient?! It’s been five years! This body isn’t getting any younger!” As she was reading me this harangue, I slid the cock inside her in one rapid motion. “Ah! Yes!”

A writhing, moaning nymph on the very precipice of my actual cock was incredibly motivating. I positioned myself over my fist in such a way that the toy became an extension of me, and slammed my hips forward into her, having the toy fuck her to the rhythm that my body was setting. The torture of being this close to her and not being able to actually touch or kiss her was exquisite, but having her in my power this way was too intoxicating to turn back. My body thrust over her, the cock clutched in my hand drove into her, her body, covered in a sheen of glistening perspiration, rocked back against me, her moans became louder and louder with each thrust, until she screamed her release and I felt her thighs tremble around me as she climaxed.

“Gods!”

I held the cock proxy inside her, waiting for her orgasm to subside, my thumb stroking over the nub of her clit as it pulsated under my touch.

“God! Athos!”

At last, I allowed myself to collapse at her side and buried my face in the spilled canopy of her golden hair.

“ _Marie_ … Marie… My cock is about to explode, I swear.”

I didn’t even bother removing it from my breeches, shoving my hand in there without a further thought. All it took was a few strokes and I cried out in ecstasy next to her spent and gloriously naked body.

We lay next to each other, afraid to move until our breathing evened out, and then she pulled a sheet over herself and rolled closer to me. I ran my fingers through her hair and over her lips, watching her flushed face coming in and out of my hazy focus.

“If I was in a body that was thirty years younger, I might let myself fall in love with you, sir,” she declared in her soft, purring voice.

“That would be a terrible idea,” I muttered in reply.

“It’s a good thing I’m older and wiser, then,” she laughed and reached out for me as if to run her fingers through my hair. “Oh no!” she cried, pulling her hand back. “How careless! I’m not wearing my gloves.”

I picked up her beautiful, exposed hand and brought it to my lips. “Next time, Marie, you may wear your gloves.” I smiled smugly. “But nothing else.”

***

**Noisy-le-Sec, May 1648**

I descended from Paradise, which I had discovered in the archbishop’s château in Noisy-le-Sec, and plummeted into Purgatory. Climbing through the window of the fair Madame de Longueville, who had taken up residence in her uncle the archbishop’s house, I slipped between the branches of a lime tree, whence I witnessed a most amusing exchange between my pursuers and… my other pursuer, I should probably say. His presence in Noisy-le-Sec was not entirely unexpected: ever since Bazin had come from Paris with the news that M. d’Artagnan was looking for me, I had been bracing myself for a reunion with the Gascon, whose bloodhound-like proclivities appeared unaffected by the passage of time.

A heated exchange between the parties followed, and I half expected the Gascon to charge at the troop and slay several of them without ever learning their names or their business. But he showed more restraint and self-control than I had anticipated, and the matter was resolved without bloodshed. The troop, grumbling angrily, disappeared in the darkness and took the road to Paris. Interesting. If it was the lover of Madame la duchesses whom they hunted, they obviously did not suspect him to live in Noisy-le-Sec. If the chase was politically motivated, d’Artagnan didn’t have to know about it. Well then: it was the lover of Madame la duchesse who was about to make his appearance before the Gascon.

Even as I prepared to materialise before him, d’Artagnan spoke: “You see, you simpleton,” he said to his servant, “that they wished no harm to us.”

“But to whom, then?”

“I neither know nor care. What I do care for now is to make my way into the Jesuits’ convent. So to horse and let us knock at their door. Happen what will and the devil take them: they can’t eat us.”

In the darkness, I smiled.

In the next moment, I was slithering down between the branches, soundless like a serpent, and I swung myself into the saddle of the horse that stood beneath the tree. The horse, alas, was already occupied, and its occupant stiffened with terror.

“I’ve a man behind me!” he cried, too paralysed to move. Pungent odour of sweat and confectionary steamed off him and made my eyes water.

D’Artagnan wheeled his horse around, drawing his sword and ready to attack. “It’s the devil who pursues!” he cried.

I bit my lip and didn’t laugh. Amazing. Twenty years have not robbed d’Artagnan of his knack of hitting the bull’s eye and missing his target completely at the same time.

“No, my dear d’Artagnan,” I said calmly, resting my hand on my thigh as the man before me attempted to rein in his nervous steed. “Not the devil. It’s Aramis.” I touched my host’s shoulder. “Gallop fast, Planchet, and when you come to the end of the village turn swiftly to the left.”

Seeing as it was long after nine, the Gascon and I had to ascend to my room using a rope ladder, for, as I explained to him, the rule of the convent was very severe. I let him mount first, and he managed to heave himself through the window and into the room, where Bazin awaited us. When I joined him d’Artagnan was looking around and taking in all aspects of my room. I could hear the clogs turn and whirr inside his brain, like the mechanism inside the skull of a clockwork monk that dwelled in a cabinet of curiosities. His gaze travelled from the trophies and swords in all corners of the chamber, and lingered at the four large paintings representing in their ordinary military costume the Cardinal de Lorraine, the Cardinal de Richelieu, the Cardinal de la Valette, and the Archbishop of Bordeaux. He looked longingly at the damask hangings and the Alencon carpets, and a shadow passed over his brow at the sight of my bed, with its trimmings of fine lace and its embroidered counterpane.

While he was taking in the interior of my room, I looked him quickly up and down. When I first met him, he had been a boy, barely five feet tall and attempting to make up for this deficiency by growing a manly moustache. In the last twenty years, he might not have succeeded to grow in height, but his moustache had grown into a formidable, fierce thing that lent much distinction to his handsome Gascon features.

“You are examining my den,” I said, discarding my cloak, hat, gloves and sword for Bazin to pick up and throwing myself into an easy chair. “Ah, my dear fellow, please forgive me. I am lodged like a Chartreux,” I apologised for the austerity of the furniture, arranging my limbs gracefully as I sprawled in the cushions.

He admired not only my cell, but also my hair and my hands. Alas, it did not escape his eagle eye that my appearance had not changed in twenty years (though his eagle brain failed to draw the correct conclusions), and I bit my lip and did a quick calculation in my head. “Do you know that I am growing old? I am nearly thirty-seven,” I told him. Predictably, d’Artagnan’s customary shrewdness had not deserted him and he pointed out that formerly he used to be my junior and that the roles now appeared reversed. The fact that he had caught me in a lie put him in an excellent mood, and he proceeded to use his supreme intelligence to guess my dark and dangerous secret: he accused me of being the lover of the duchesse de Longueville. I denied the accusation. He asked me if I was rich, and I denied it. He asked me if I took an interest in politics, and I denied it.

At last, he dropped all pretences and executed the coup that had brought him to my humble abode. He began to speak of Mazarin. At the mention of that detestable name, I could not contain myself and treated him to an eloquent sermon, which I concluded with the words: “Monsieur de Mazarin is an upstart, a man of no name, who will only be the tool of a party in France. He will amass wealth, he will injure the king’s revenue and pay to himself the pensions which Richelieu paid to others. He is neither a gentleman in manner nor in feeling, but a sort of buffoon, a punchinello, a pantaloon.” I paused briefly and, remembering my role as a hermit (albeit one who bedded a princess of blood), added: “Do you know him? I do not.”

The Gascon’s visit filled my heart with nostalgia. It reminded me of our Parisian days, when his attempts to pull my strings through lies and trickery caused me amusement and made my blood boil with anger in the same measure. Nothing had changed, for his methods of sounding me out were as cunning as ever, and I didn’t pretend to come up with lies that were more sophisticated than his questions. And so it came that we spent an evening locked in a companionable battle of wits, for each of us endeavoured to make his interlocutor falter and yield. He had come to recruit me as a partisan for the cardinal’s cause, I resisted, we parted amicably. “Let us belong to no party, but remain friends,” d’Artagnan concluded the interview, pouring himself another glass of my excellent wine. “Let us be neither Cardinalists nor Frondists!”

We drank to that.

I saw him out. I saw him down the ladder and to the edge of the village. I saw him ride off, while I turned around and made my way back – not to the convent, but to the lime trees by the archbishop’s house. It wasn’t before long that the window, behind which I knew lay Paradise, opened. There was a rustling of the leaves, branches creaked, a piece of bark fell on the brim of my hat and I shook it off. In the next moment, I held the lithe body of a cavalier in my arms, whose bright eyes glittered like the waves of the sea under the starlit sky.

The eyes were laughing up at me, but the gleam of mirth faded at the sight of my face. “What is it?”

“Come!” I wrapped my fingers around a slender arm and pulled my companion with me. “You’re risking too much,” I muttered once we had gone a few paces and were concealed in the shadows cast by the tall hedge that grew there. “We almost got caught this time. Is a night with me truly worth it, princess?”

Madame de Longueville’s luminous eyes flashed under the brim of her plumed cavalier’s hat. “What will you have me say, chevalier? That I would risk my life, my _honour_ for a tumble in your bed?” She laughed. “Perhaps I enjoy the thrill.”

“Anne-Geneviève…” I broke off. The night breeze carried a number of noises, and the air was saturated with the perfumes of spring. I picked up a discord within the nocturnal symphony with all my senses: the Gascon had not left. Now, as ever, he was spying on me from the shadows, stealthy like a hound that had smelled a bitch in heat. Well then. Anything that he would see from where he squatted in the bushes would prove to him that he had been right, that I was the lover of the duchesse de Longueville. Once in possession of one secret, he might stop ferreting for others.

“Calm yourself, dear René,” Anne-Geneviève said softly. “The same thing will never happen again. I have discovered a sort of subterranean passage which runs beneath the street and we shall only have to raise one of the marble slabs before the door to open you an entrance and an outlet.”

“I swear to you, princess, that if your reputation did not depend on precautions and if my life alone were jeopardised-”

“Yes, yes!” she waved her hand impatiently. “I know you are as brave and venturesome as any man in the world, but you do not belong to me alone: you belong to all our party. Be prudent! Sensible!”

Inwardly, I winced. Anne-Geneviève had spoken the fatal words that revealed too much. She had disclosed my secret, the _true_ secret, to d’Artagnan, who would cherish it until such a moment when it would be of the greatest use to him.

Outwardly, I did not let either of them know anything was amiss: “I always obey, Madame, when I am commanded by so gentle a voice.” I kissed her hand tenderly.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, laughing.

“What’s the matter?”

“Do you not see that the wind has blown off my hat?”

As I rushed after the fugitive, I felt the Gascon’s hot presence in the bushes, like a charcoal kiln in the forest. Oh, but he must be palpitating with glee – I certainly would be, were our roles reversed. His journey to Noisy-le-Sec had not been in vain. He might not have gained me, but he had gained information that he could use against me, which, to him, was at least as valuable as my actual person, if not more so.

I couldn’t help laughing. The thought of the Gascon – sneaking, lurking, crouching, skulking, sniffing like a truffle pig – that thought amused me beyond all measure. His interference had certainly effected one thing: it had alerted me to the fact that we had to act at once.

Still laughing, I returned to my mistress, her hat in hand, and we continued our walk towards my convent. She would descend the ladder from my window before the first cock-crow, leaving behind a plump purse on the nightstand. That purse would travel with me to Paris, where a troop of men and horses waited to be equipped for a venture that might lose some of them their heads.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold, the Cunning Plan!
> 
> I believe, [Marie_Michon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_Michon/pseuds/Marie_Michon), you will like bits of this chapter very much.

**Château Bragelonne, 26th of May 1648**

I had been expecting a demon and a nymph, so when my eyes beheld a different rider, I let out an exclamation of surprise.

“Great God! Rochefort!”

“My dear count,” he alighted from the saddle with the lightness and agility of a much younger man and threw himself into my arms so that I could embrace him. “Great God, indeed. But which one? I shall have to propitiate whichever God had finally sprung me from prison properly.”

“Prison? Rochefort, you?” I took him by the arm and led him into the salon. “If d’Herblay or I had known that’s where you’d been, we would have come for you!” 

I blushed a bit thinking about the possibilities. Such an undertaking would have been very diverting for Aramis and myself, indeed. Before Rochefort could venture a reply, I addressed Blaisois, who had appeared at my side quietly. He wasn’t quite as adept at reading my mind like my everlasting shadow of Grimaud, but in my Grigori’s absence, he sufficed. 

“Prepare a room for M. le comte upstairs,” I ordered.

“Certainly, Monsieur. The blue room?” Had Grimaud been there, I could almost imagine his eyes glowing with a pruriently hopeful fire. On the contrary, Blaisois’ eyes seemed innocent as he asked such an indecent question.

“ _Not_ ,” I said tersely, “the blue room.” 

He should have known very well by now that the blue room, which was adjacent to my own bedroom, was reserved for Marie whenever she stayed with us. And for Aramis whenever he graced Bragelonne with his presence. Both of them were expected; both of them were yet to overlap. But certainly Aramis would cede his place to a woman, much though his pride might ache for it.

If Grimaud had been there, I could imagine him impudently signing “Not your type? Too old?” After so long, I could easily predict the impish nagging without his actual presence.

“So, I am to stay then?” Rochefort smiled at me and for a moment I wondered whether my imagination had led me astray. He wasn’t too old, far from it.

“You have escaped from prison and I have not seen you for nearly five years,” I replied. “I was hoping you’d honor me by your company longer.”

“And I was hoping you would honor me by your honesty, count.” I flushed to the roots of my powdered hair and hoped he would come quickly to his point. He did not disappoint me. “All of Paris is astir with talk of you and the duchesse de Chevreuse.” Heat rose up my neck. “Who would have thought,” Rochefort laughed, “You and Marie de Rohan! But then again, I suppose you and she have more in common than most people can guess, isn’t that so?”

“What are you saying?” I dropped formalities since he had appeared to drop pretenses. 

“I mean that I am neither fooled by the powder in your hair nor your priestly friend’s mind tricks.” My face betrayed my alarm yet he continued. “I am immune to all kinds of bedevilment. What would you expect, count? I’ve served the great Cardinal long enough to see a thing or two.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” I smiled, quoting the Bard. Rochefort nodded at me from his seat.

“Those experiences have made me more adept at reading into all kinds of disassemblement and seeing the true face of demons,” he concluded with a kind of certainty that I envied.

I wondered what Aramis’ true face looked like to him. Did he merely see the youthful and angelic exterior, the way I did, or did he see Aramis’ second soul, the one that he believed to be demonic?

“How fortunate for you, my friend,” I smiled, pouring him a glass of my best wine. “If I had such power at my disposal, I daresay your friend Milady de Winter may have still been alive.”

“Do not blame yourself too much for _her_ ,” Rochefort’s eyes clouded as he brought the wine to his lips. “In our profession, you’re lucky if you can end up dead, rather than languishing in prison, forgotten by your friends and enemies alike.”

“Oh, count, you’re tearing me apart with grief!”

“If it’s a prison break you are so keen to partake in,” Rochefort smiled at me, a wicked smile that sat becomingly on his dashing face, “I might have a proposal for you yet.”

“You wish me to help you spring the duke de Beaufort,” I laughed.

“Do your divine powers extend to mind-reading, my dear count?”

“Oh no, my friend,” I smiled and sat next to him, “I assure you, there is nothing supernatural about what I’m about to say to you.”

“What a pity. And here I thought you’d finally tell me the truth about your divine origins!” His eyes lingered on my lips, and again I was forced to consider whether my imaginary Grimaud would have been wrong twice over: Rochefort may have been my type.

“I do not often trust humans with my secret,” I said, realizing that I was giving away my secret even as I spoke, “but if I could, I would disclose it to you.” I placed my hand over his in a gesture that I hoped was more reassuring than forward. It was at this moment that the sound of an arriving carriage startled us both.

“What’s that?” Rochefort looked out the window. “Oh my! Madame de Chevreuse herself! In a carriage with her husband’s arms on it!”

“Marie,” I whispered, rising.

“Hello Rohan nymph,” Segundo pronounced from his perch.

Rochefort laughed. “You two lovebirds are plotting Beaufort’s escape already! Or else she flaunts this affair far too brazenly! Come, come, admit at least that much.”

“You are as shrewd and sagacious as ever,” I muttered and excused myself so that I could go and greet my newest arrival.

Rochefort and Marie had been bitter enemies in Richelieu’s time. Imagine my surprise then when she had smiled upon the count graciously and allowed him to kiss her hand. 

“Back from exile, Madame la duchesse?” Rochefort inquired.

“Back from the Bastille, Monsieur le comte?” she beamed at him.

“You knew?” I stood stricken. 

“Of course I knew, mon cher,” she turned her dazzling eyes to me. “The chevalier de Rochefort and I were part of Beaufort’s plot to have _il stronzo_ assassinated. Oh!” she pretended to be embarrassed. “Pardon my language, dear Rochefort.”

“Madame, I stand ready to pardon everything, if you would allow me to be part of your latest venture.”

“Out of friendship for M. le duc?” she asked gaily.

“Out of my all abiding hatred for M. Mazarin,” Rochefort bowed. “That fatuous clown had told me I was too old to be of service to him and had confined me to the Bastille. I would go out of my way to piss in his soup, if you yourself pardon the expression, Madame.”

“I see it is time for us all to speak rather plainly,” I motioned for both of them to sit down, while my servants brought in refreshments.

“Should we not wait for Aramis?” Marie moved her eyebrow.

“Aramis never arrives before sunset,” I replied.

“Is that the time he crawls out of his grave?” Rochefort threw out casually.

“Aramis doesn’t have a grave,” I smiled. “He sleeps in a convent, in a very large bed, with an incredibly delicately embroidered counterpane.” They both stared at me for a moment and I had to clear my throat. “So he tells me.”

Marie laughed and her gloved hand pressed softly against mine. “Oh Athos, you make me the happiest of immortals.” And when my jaw dropped at her offhand revelation, she added, “Rochefort knows, darling. Put your mind to rest.”

We continued to speak, Rochefort filling us in on his conversation with the Italian upstart and his run in with d’Artagnan, Marie and I telling him of our plot to free Beaufort from Vincennes. Step one was already accomplished: Grimaud had assumed his position as jailer and taken to it as if it had been his sole life’s calling. 

“Brilliant coup!” Rochefort exclaimed. “We already have a man on the inside. Only now we must find a way to smuggle in supplies that his Grace can utilize in the escape.”

“We’ve had quite a lively discussion about it,” Marie smiled. 

Our lively discussion involved a heated debate about the merits of the Trojan horse and whether anyone would ever fall for such an Odyssean trick ever again. I maintained that no one would. Marie’s opinion of humans seemed surprisingly lower than mine. Perhaps because she had lived multiple lifetimes due to their readiness to sacrifice their young for fortune and power.

“We’re going to need a cake,” I said.

“A cake?” Rochefort’s eyes widened.

“Or a pie,” I scratched at my beard. “Something that can be stuffed.”

“A Trojan pie!” Marie laughed and slapped me with her fan. I wanted to tumble her right then and there.

“A pie full of Greeks?” Rochefort did not seem very impressed.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a rope ladder.” Indeed, it was Aramis’ convent that had given me that idea. “Or, really, a rope would do. Marie… Madame de Chevreuse tells me the duke is in excellent shape.”

“Oh, _does_ she?” Rochefort twirled his moustache and was smacked in his own turn with Marie’s fan.

“What else would we need?”

“Weapons?” Rochefort suggested.

“That goes without saying. Two daggers should be compact enough,” I nodded, making a mental list.

“La Ramee might raise an alarm?”

“Better include a choke pear then,” I suggested. 

“A rope, two daggers, and a choke pear,” Marie laughed. “Sounds like something I might pack for a trip to your house, my dear M. le comte.”

My cock twitched inside my breeches and I suddenly felt very thankful that Aramis had not been there to overhear that discussion. Rochefort’s eyes strayed to my lips again, then down to the root cause of all of life’s embarrassments and back to Marie’s brazenly exposed teeth as she beamed at me. His exterior remained unmoved.

“Do you own a choke pear, count?” she whispered close to my ear, and her breath tickled my lobe.

“Not now, you insatiable strumpet,” I whispered back, my eyes trailing down her long neck and into the enticing cleft of her cleavage.

“I hear the sound of horses approaching,” Rochefort interrupted our indelicate tête-a-tête.

“That must be Aramis!” Marie exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Oh _do_ contain yourself, you wicked nymph!” I teased her, squeezing her gloved hand.

“I have not seen that monster in years,” she fanned herself with an air of aggression. “Is he still as beautiful as ever? Oh, he must be! How utterly fabulous and infuriating!”

“Marie!” I pleaded, looking into her tumultuous eyes. To make her happy at that moment, I would have gone down on my knees before Rochefort and pressed my face into the heat of her petticoats. “This was partially your idea,” I reminded her instead.

“I just don’t know if I will survive seeing the two of you together, at last,” she declared, fanning herself again with theatrical exaggeration. “I’ve waited for this moment for _centuries_!”

“ _That’s_ your big concern?”

“Go now, go! Greet your sweet flittermouse!” she pushed me towards the doorway, giggling like a young girl.

***

The comte de La Fère stood in the door when I slid out of the saddle. My horse, which had been staggering and foaming for the last league, dropped to its knees, rolled on its side and lay in the dust, panting, with bloody froth bubbling from its mouth. I pulled my pistol from the holster, stood over my steed and shot it in the head. Then, I walked to Athos and embraced him tenderly. “At last!” I muttered into his hair. “The last few leagues were endless, I feared the horse would drop dead before I get here.”

“You didn’t have to hurry so.” We let go of each other, and he held me at arm’s length, taking in my dusty cloak and boots.

“I spent half the week running through Paris on various errands and have been on the road for two days without pause. Or nourishment.”

“You look fatigued.”

“Do I?”

Athos smiled. “Don’t look so shocked. I doubt that anyone apart from me will notice.” He linked his arm with mine and led me inside the house. In passing, he held up a servant and gave him his orders. Before the man could scurry off to his duties, I instructed him to fetch me at once a leather pouch from the saddle bag.

“Would you like to go upstairs and wash first, before you meet the others?” Athos continued to be the gracious host. “The hot water is on its way.”

“No.” I took off my hat and strode towards the drawing room. “I have important news, we will have to act fast.”

Athos smiled and followed me inside. Even though he hadn’t told me, I had guessed whom I would find there, and I wasn’t disappointed. Her golden hair artfully arranged, her lithe form displayed to advantage in her light-blue gown, her eyes sparkling above the rim of her fan, Marie was reclining on Athos’ most elegant chaise longue. She smiled her most radiant smile when I entered, and I bowed and kissed her hand.

“Welcome back to France, Madame.”

“I have been back for quite some time, Aramis,” she pointed out. “As well you know.”

“But I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you since your return.”

“Ah! You were pursuing other pleasures, I believe.”

“Not unlike yourself.”

She laughed and brushed my hand with her fingertips. “Touché, Aramis. But I am glad to see you.” For a brief moment, her gaze flickered to Athos, and I grinned.

“And you, count,” I said, turning my attention to the fourth occupant of the room. “I expected to encounter Madame la duchesse here, but confess I am surprised to see you.”

“Pleasantly surprised, I hope?” Rochefort came towards me and embraced me likewise. He felt thin in my arms, but by no means frail: the hard bones and firm muscles of a human who was as resilient almost as any immortal. His hair, however, was almost entirely white, and his face was pale as death. It wasn’t difficult to see that the last five years had not been kind to him, for, unlike our nymph, he was much aged. Despite his advanced years, he vibrated with a virility that made my fangs tingle. I let go and pulled out of his embrace.

“Very much so,” I ensured him with a warmth that surprised myself. Rochefort might have been a human, but there was something diabolical about him, that former evil genius and demonic adversary, that rendered him most attractive, slightly unsettling even. “I wasn’t aware that you were involved in the current undertaking.”

“I’ve only just joined up,” he said. Before he could say more, the servants came in with trays loaded with dishes, and I used the break in our conversation to discard my cloak, sword and hat. I threw myself into a chair across from Marie and watched her watch the scene in the room as if it was a Commedia dell’arte performed on a Parisian stage for her enjoyment. Even d’Artagnan would have realised that I had burst in on the most animated and entertaining conversation, for not only did Marie smile like the cat that got the cream, but also Athos’ eyes were agleam with heathen light and Rochefort’s wicked face gave him the appearance of a man who had witnessed the sins of the Ancient World.

I waited until the servants had left the room, and then, without giving Athos the chance to play the convivial and polite host, I said: “D’Artagnan will be here soon.”

Marie raised her eyebrows and Athos frowned and asked: “How do you know?”

Rochefort alone remained unmoved.

“He hunted me down in Noisy-le-Sec,” I said. “He knows where my allegiance lies.”

“He’s a Mazarinist,” Rochefort said.

“Did he attempt to recruit you as well?” I asked him.

A roguish smile twisted Rochefort’s mouth. “Mazarin did.”

“And you said no?”

“I said yes.”

“Ah! So you are here to spy on us!”

We all laughed, and Athos, who was carving a capon, said, casually twisting the knife into the bird’s breast: “That is a dangerous game you are playing, my dear friend.”

“We all are,” Rochefort replied.

“But you have more to lose,” Athos said and, glancing briefly at me and then back at Rochefort, added: “As a mortal.”

“That is true,” Rochefort said calmly. “As well as more reason to hate Mazarin. I imagine to you he is barely a nuisance, like a fat fly in the room – annoying at present, gone in the next moment. As to me-” He shook his head with a grimace.

“He kept you in the Bastille for five years,” Marie said.

“He told me I’m too old to be of use.”

“The fool,” Marie said calmly and Athos and I exchanged a glance. Marie and Rochefort had been sworn enemies, but that did not mean that they could not have been lovers also.

“What do you expect?” Rochefort said, suffusing his voice with oil of vitriol. “He comes from a family of milliners. The mad hatter’s disease runs in his blood.”

“In that case you will be happy to hear that we have the means to put all our plans in operation.” I stood up, and Athos said:

“Ah, you brought the money! Good, we’re going to need it…”

“…to pay for horses and men,” I said.

“I would have hoped the men don’t have to be paid off, Aramis. Are they not convinced of the cause?”

“It can never hurt to demonstrate to your allies that there _is_ money,” I explained. “Lest they should decide to rethink their convictions. Contempt is a powerful motivator,” I continued with a bow to Rochefort, “but the men must know that the cause will benefit them in the long term.”

I put the purse on the table. “This is what is left after everyone has been outfitted. Your stepmother,” I turned to Marie, “Organised men, relay horses and money. The contents of this purse was merely a supplement, to make sure that we don’t run out of means halfway through. We have a troop of fifty cavaliers waiting for our signal. We must act fast, before they gamble away their equipment and drink away their horses.”

“We must act fast anyway, because d’Artagnan will attempt to hunt Athos down,” Rochefort said. 

“And even if he doesn’t – Mazarin may already know your names.”

“Our names?” Athos said.

“Your real names. By that I mean your French names. He inquired after you.”

“Why?”

“Because-” Rochefort hesitated, and for a moment the shadow of embarrassment darkened his features. “When he attempted to recruit me, I used you to bargain with: the men who performed a heroic feat for Anne of Austria twenty years ago. I dangled you like fat carrots in front of an ass. I did not tell him who you are!” He added quickly at the sight of Athos’ eyes blazing with a fire worthy of his Thunderous Father. “But by now somebody might have disclosed your present identities to him.”

“By ‘somebody’,” Marie said calmly, “you mean that d’Artagnan.”

“It is possible.”

“D’Artagnan wouldn’t betray his friends like that!” Athos said.

“D’Artagnan spied on Aramis and attempted to kill him, back in the days when he called you his dearest friends,” Marie said. “You didn’t know that?”

Athos shook his head, stricken and confused.

Marie waved her hand impatiently. “This is not the time to recount old stories. Suffice to say that he followed… someone to Aramis’ house, accused that person of being Aramis’ mistress and then attacked a man whom he had taken for Aramis, with the intention of killing him. Half of that happened outside the window behind which I was concealed and I heard every word of his accusations. The other half was related to me by the man who was witness to it.”

“By the ‘man’ you mean-” Rochefort said, with a wicked gleam in his dark eyes.

“Count! Please!” Marie raised her hand imperiously. “There’s no need to name names.”

“Well, he has been dead these twenty years.” Rochefort shrugged, but obeyed.

“If d’Artagnan was then willing to kill you over a woman, Aramis – does that necessarily mean that he would betray us now?” Athos said.

“Perhaps not you,” I said. “He always liked you best. When he came to see me in Noisy-le-Sec, he attempted to wheedle out of me information about Porthos’ whereabouts, in a very roundabout manner.”

“By roundabout you mean-”

“I mean that he didn’t ask me if I knew where Porthos lived, like a normal person might when they inquire after old friends.”

“Did you tell him where Porthos lives?” Athos asked.

I grinned. “In a roundabout manner. If I hadn’t, he might have found you first. Sending him after Porthos was safer – especially since Porthos lives a long way from here. But he never asked after you, Athos. Either he’s convinced that you and I have not been in touch, or he didn’t want to let on that he’s looking for you.”

“Maybe he already knew where I live.”

“He did not,” Rochefort said. “He told me he had to seek all three of you, for he had no idea where you are.”

“He might have been lying,” I said.

For a moment, we fell silent, each of us contemplating the web of lies and trickery in which we were entangled and which was impossible to unravel. I knew that d’Artagnan had lied to me as I had lied to him, but what about Rochefort? When had _he_ lied and to whom? Was he lying to us now? We had accepted his word and his allegiance readily, for there was hardly a greater insult for a man like him than getting called ‘too old’ to pursue his calling. An affront such as this would make even Athos swear revenge.

“Does it matter?” Marie said suddenly. “D’Artagnan is not our most pressing problem, gentlemen.”

“As always, you are most astute, Madame,” I said, bowing. “Let us forget d’Artagnan and concentrate on the important matters.”

“I will remind him of the virtue and value of friendship,” Athos said. “The next time we meet – and I believe it will be very soon – I will remind him that he was like a son to me.”

“Your _parrot_ was like a son to you,” I reminded him. “On Rhodes, remember? You never referred to d’Artagnan as your son. As your pet perhaps.”

“You’re right, Aramis. You are almost as astute as the nymph,” Athos said.

Marie laughed and I threw my glove at Athos, who smirked. “Is this a challenge, d’Herblay?”

“Please!” Marie called out. “As much as I’m enjoying this – the important matters. Remember?”

“The men and horses are ready,” I reiterated. “The rest of the money is to be handed over to the duke once he’s free. I understand Grimaud has been making himself useful at Vincennes? All Paris is abuzz with stories of how the duke hates and loathes his new jailer.”

“How did you know it was Grimaud?” Athos asked, grinning.

“I’d recognise that scamp’s modus operandi anywhere.”

Athos didn’t reply, but he mouthed ‘astute’ at me.

“The duke has already received a purse filled with gold,” Marie said, rather loftily.

“Another one won’t go amiss,” I said smoothly, bowing my head.

Marie turned away from me and spoke to Athos and Rochefort: “The man whose gardens are adjacent to Vincennes and separated from it only by a moat has been paid and won’t ask any questions. It is not necessary for anyone to know his name, for he has nothing to do with the venture. The bakery of Father Marteau opposite Vincennes has been purchased and its present owner is the duke’s former maître d'hôtel. He will supply the pie to the duke.”

“All that remains is to find the baker.” Athos and I exchanged a glance and I shook my head in fond exasperation, for I could read his thoughts clearly in the glint of his eyes and the smirk that curled his mouth. My experience in baking was neither here nor there, and I wondered that such a cruel joke had occurred to him.

“Oh, as to that,” Rochefort grinned, his smile predatory, “leave that to me. I will arrange the pie and make sure it is stuffed with the right ingredients.”

“Then I shall dub you the baker, count, as I have dubbed the good duchess a seamstress,” I laughed.

“A gardener, I think,” Athos smiled with a fond glance at our dear friend the chevalier de Rochefort. Who would have thought that we would be drawn so closely by mutual contempt? Well, I could have told Athos that, for, as I used to explain to him, I always found contempt to be a powerful motivator. “In the lovely gardens surrounding Vincennes.”

“A gardener,” Rochefort raised his glass in a toast.

“Did you bring the ladder, Aramis?” Marie asked sweetly.

“Because if you didn’t,” Athos said, “We would have to fashion a ladder out of torn sheets, and you know how that would upset Grimaud.”

“Better than that,” I told them and reached into my leather pouch again. “I brought ropes. They take up less space and can be used for more than just climbing down walls.”

Marie laughed and Athos bit his lip.

“I bet,” Rochefort said.

“All that remains is to inform the duke of the hour when he will be freed,” I said. “Do you have means of communicating with him across the moat?”

“I’ve thought of this,” Athos said. “His highness is an accomplished tennis player, I understand.”

“He is.” Marie and Rochefort exchanged a look.

“Well then – nothing easier than that. Grimaud will tell him to play tennis and send several balls over the ramparts. It was Grimaud’s own idea,” he said with a side glance at me. “He is most adept at coming up with means of clandestine communication.”

“And then?”

“His highness will approach the walls and call out to a man who works in the moat to send them back again. I hope Madame la duchesse does not consider a bit of crude stitching beneath her dignity?” His eyes sparkled at Marie and hers sparkled back.

“Anything for a friend as old and beloved as… the duke,” she said. “What will you have me stitch?”

“A letter must be concealed under the cover of the ball.”

“How long a letter?”

Athos made a gesture as if to reach for paper and pen, but Rochefort was quicker. He wrote a few lines and presented the letter to us.

_My Lord, Your friends are watching over you and the hour of your deliverance is at hand. Ask day after to-morrow to have a pie supplied you by the new confectioner opposite the castle, and who is no other than Noirmont, your former maitre d'hotel. Do not open the pie till you are alone. I hope you will be satisfied with its contents._

_Your highness’ most devoted servant, in the Bastille as elsewhere,_  
_Comte de Rochefort._

“‘The day after tomorrow’?” Marie raised her eyebrows. “When are you proposing to leave us, comte, to deliver the message in time?”

“Tomorrow after breakfast,” Rochefort said. “I will be in Paris two days hence.”

“It is a long journey-”

“Do you deem me ‘too old’ to make it within two days?” he grinned his diabolical grin.

“Never! I would not wish to stir your wrath, my dear Rochefort.”

“There will be a great coming and going in Bragelonne tomorrow,” Athos said, lounging back comfortably in his chair. “I am going to entertain several of my good neighbours and serve an eau-de-vie from the West Indies. It’s made from sugarcane and is quite potent – you might like it, Aramis.”

***

**Château Bragelonne, 27th of May 1648**

If you had told me, even five years prior to the date, that my country house on the Loire would become the headquarters of a great political conspiracy, I would have laughed. But somehow, not only had this become the case, I was also hosting a _party_ in order to cover up the fact that my house was conspiratorial headquarters. 

Artfully arranged in my sitting room, scattered among my good neighbors of the local gentry, sat the duchess de Chevreuse engaged in intimate conversation with the comte de Rochefort, while the abbé d’Herblay held court with the duke de Barbe and Madame de Saint-Remy. I approached the latter group, bowing to Madame de Saint-Remy, and inquired after her daughter’s health. Her daughter, the eight year old Louise de La Valliere, was out walking with her nurse Marceline near my château, and got so distracted with chasing Segundo (who had for some reason become particularly obsessed with the tiny human) around, that she had the misfortune of tripping and falling. As a result, her ankle had been sprained, and my relations with my neighbors were too delicate to be tossed away over a swollen ankle. I contemplated giving her Segundo as a compensatory gift, but when I told the parrot of my intentions, he informed me that he loved Aramis. I realized then that he was too dangerous a gift to impart upon an eight-year-old.

“If I could borrow M. l’abbé for a moment,” I inquired, taking Aramis by the elbow and leading him off to stand before Marie’s chaise longue so that the four of us could speak.

“You know, if it wasn’t for your country guests, I would bite you right now,” Aramis whispered as we were on our way.

“In front of Rochefort?”

“It would be a benefit for him to witness the extent of your immortality.”

“And your appetite?”

“Enough flirting, you two,” Marie gently slapped me with her fan. “Does La Ramee have reason to suspect Grimaud?”

“As far as La Ramee is concerned,” I replied quietly, “the duke hates Grimaud almost as much as I secretly love him.” 

“Indeed,” Aramis chimed in. “After the infamous episode with the hanged crustacean, all of France knows not only of the duke’s joke at the Cardinal’s expense, but of his undying hatred for his new jailer.” 

“All that remains now is a game of tennis _au plein air_ ,” I smiled at Rochefort, who seemed to sparkle with anticipation at showing Mazarin just how very spry he still was. He raised his glass and clinked it against my own, which indeed contained wine, but only for show. I was, after all, still impersonating a Frenchman, and Frenchmen loved their wine as Aramis once loved my blood.

“And to organize the troops,” Rochefort added. “I am setting out for Paris today. We shall meet at six in the evening in four days time and set the escape for seven. What is the date?”

“The twenty-seventh of May,” I responded.

“The night of the thirty-first of May, then, the duke will be free,” Rochefort pronounced.

“D’Artagnan!” Aramis suddenly gasped and grabbed my arm, squeezing it so tightly that I almost dropped my ornamental glass.

“Don’t worry about your Gascon, mon cher. He will not be able to stop what we have set into motion,” Marie cooed.

“No. _D’Artagnan._ ” Aramis scowled and pointed out the window, through which indeed I saw the friend of our alleged youth descend from his horse and, taking in the arrayed carriages in the front, approach the château with a careful step. “I warned you to expect him, but his timing could not be more deplorable. As always!”

“You were right again,” I said, my hand trembling. “What do we do?”

“Hide!” Marie exclaimed, lifting her fan to cover her face, just as the Gascon appeared in the doorway, behind an even more discombobulated figure of his Planchet.

“Get rid of him!” Aramis hissed and wrapped himself into my curtain. In the meantime, Rochefort ducked behind Marie’s chaise longue. “Tell him how great he is and make him go away!” the curtain instructed.

“My dearest friend!” I leapt towards d’Artagnan, pressing him warmly to my breast and kissing him on both cheeks. 

The Gascon’s eyes grew wide as he took in my appearance. I regretted that, unlike Aramis, I did not have bedeviling at my disposal to make people think I was older than I looked. He scanned first my face, then my body, then took in the room, and I heard the wheels turning in that wily brain of his. Our d’Artagnan was always calculating, planning his next move. But much though I would have loved to take my time welcoming him, I could not let him see my Frondeur co-conspirators. I stood right in front of him, blocking out his view of Marie hidden behind the fan and Aramis hidden behind the curtain. As for Rochefort, he had jumped out the window as soon as Planchet appeared in the doorway, much to the bewilderment of my other guests, I’m sure. 

“My dear d’Artagnan, what an utterly unexpected surprise! How long has it been? What brings you here? My, how you've grown!” I clapped my hands on both his shoulders, still blocking his view with my own superior height.

“Athos… I don’t believe my eyes,” the Gascon uttered, truly looking as if he’d seen a ghost. And, considering my appearance, I did not blame him.

His arrival had caused quite a stir, followed by a lull in the conversation while everyone turned towards us and awaited some sort of explanation. I was forced to acknowledge the new arrival. 

"I present to you," I said, turning towards those assembled in the room, "Monsieur le chevalier d'Artagnan, lieutenant of his majesty's musketeers, a devoted friend and one of the most excellent, brave gentlemen that I have ever known." I fixed my eyes in the direction of the window while my guests murmured their greetings and saw the curtain tremble with barely suppressed rage while Marie fanned herself in earnest. “And now,” I turned the Gascon away, “allow me to give you a tour.”

At that moment, I looked up the stairs, where, ever faithful to her mistress, Kitty stood gaping at the new arrival. In her hand she held Segundo. She unclasped her fingers and the parrot came floating down, beating his wings excitedly as he flittered right up to my shoulder and triumphantly screeched, “Grilled Octopus!”

On the one hand, I was thankful for the distraction. On the other hand, I couldn’t very well take d’Artagnan upstairs, where Kitty stood frozen and mute like the statue of Antinous in my garden. Ah yes, the garden. I should take him there.

“This is Raoul Segundo, my parrot,” I said, shoving the bird into the startled d’Artagnan’s surprised hands. “Look at how beautiful he is. He’s extremely rare, you know. Come, let me show you my gardens.”

“What did the bird say?” d’Artagnan inquired, looking increasingly disconcerted.

“Htapodi Skharas!!!” Segundo repeated and it dawned on me why d’Artagnan did not understand him. 

“Oh. He… speaks tongues,” I mumbled. “Really, no one knows who owned him before, it may have been some pirate.”

“Hera’s cunt!”

“Yes, I… I don’t know… I don’t know who his parents are.” As I said this, I caught Marie’s face out of the corner of my eye. She had dropped the fan and was pressing her hand over her mouth attempting not to laugh. “I don’t know why I just said that,” I added. “Good boy, Segundo! Come with M. d’Artagnan to the garden!” 

As I turned d’Artagnan forcefully towards the exit, I saw Marie sneaking up the stairs, clutching at her corset with one hand as if she was about to turn into a river from laughter. I could only hope that Aramis would extricate himself from the curtain and be gentleman enough to go see to her once the Gascon was out of the building.

***

From my vantage point behind the curtain, I could hear Athos’ voice as he showed d’Artagnan around. Curse the Gascon. Curse his knack for bursting in at the most inopportune moments. It was enough to make one believe he was using the services of a witch, or perhaps he routinely propitiated one of the old gods who led him, without fail, to the place where he could make most mischief.

The voices faded out as Athos led d’Artagnan deeper into the garden (no doubt to show off the marble figure of his former eromenos and wax poetic about how he used to be in love with a Grecian statue), and I deemed it safe to disentangle myself from the heavy drapes. I stepped out of the window enclosure with the mien of a man who was in the right place at the right time. Fortunately, thanks to the West Indian eau-de-vie that Athos had served his guests, everyone was cheerfully preoccupied with their own concerns and of those of their closest neighbours, and nobody paid me any heed. For a brief moment, I wondered what had happened to Rochefort after he had jumped out of the window and if he was forced to skulk around in bushes, waiting for Athos to lead d’Artagnan away. But then I saw our dear chevalier mounting his horse in the courtyard. He saluted me with a roguish grin, patted his saddlebag (no doubt to indicate that he carried the ingredients for the pie stuffing with him), threw his cape around himself dashingly and rode off.

Now, for the nymph. Upstairs, I knocked at the door of the blue room. A quiet “Enter”, and I entered to behold Marie sprawled on the counterpane, her magnificent hair and her gown cascading down the bed like a waterfall, still shaken by the final apoplexies of mirth.

“Are you quite well, Madame?” I inquired, solicitous as ever for her wellbeing. “Shall I send for some water? The spirit of hartshorn? Or do you require something more potent – the count’s rumbullion, perhaps? – to fortify yourself.”

“Oh, Aramis,” she sighed, watching me with liquid eyes that glittered like sun-dappled pools of water under the canopy of the forest. “I believe it is you who requires that particular aqua vitae. To fortify yourself.”

“Stop meddling, you wily minx,” I said, sitting down by her side and taking her hand in mine. “Athos and I are friends.”

“I can see that,” she said, entangling her fingers with mine. “A friendship of a magnitude such as yours is impossible to miss.”

“Why him, Marie?” I whispered.

“How can you ask that?” she whispered back.

“It may kill him. Is that truly worth it?”

“How can you ask that?” she asked again, with a wistful look in her fine eyes. “Do you not drink his blood?”

I bit my lip, unsure of how much he had told her, and how much she had guessed.

“Not anymore.”

“Perhaps you should.”

I laughed. “If only he’d let me.”

“Why don’t you try to persuade him? I find the count is open to persuasion.” She squeezed my hand, and then she tugged it. “We are both prisoners here, Aramis,” she said gently, pulling me towards her. “Due to the unexpected visit of your old friend, we won’t be able to leave this room until he leaves.”

“ _If_ he leaves,” I said gloomily.

“Don’t flash your fangs at me, chéri,” Marie pulled me down despite my resistance, and I settled by her side, resting my head on her shoulder. Her small, cool hand alighted on my hair and she brushed it back from my brow. For a while, I was content to drift in her embrace, but then I stirred and she tightened her grip around me. “Stay,” she said gently, stroking my hair. “I’m sure Athos won’t forget and abandon us here. He is the most considerate host, I find. It wouldn’t surprise me if he sent food and drinks up to keep us alive until nightfall.”

“You think this is a game, don’t you, Marie?” My voice was rather muffled, for I was pressing my mouth into the kerchief that covered her décolleté. “You enjoy playing with human fates.”

“What do you expect? You men have your sport and your wars. I have this.”

“You truly _are_ a goddess.”

She laughed softly and I felt her press a kiss into my hair. “I told you so, didn’t I?” Her slim fingers toyed with the medallion that hung around her neck, and the memory flashed through my mind: our first night together. The shores of Turkey. Athos lost to the sea. I shuddered in spite of myself.

“Do you remember?” Marie whispered, having seemingly read my mind. “The first time we lay in a bed together. You were injured and I held you, just like I am doing now. I was in a body that was as old as this one is now,” she added, smiling.

“You were beautiful, my nymph.” I nestled deeper into her embrace. 

“Do you think so still?”

“Always.”

I might have drifted off, lulled into an inertia of body and mind by the hypnotic haze that hung around us. After days of feverish activity, my body thrummed like a highly strung cord. But Marie had always known how to use those clever fingers of hers to play me, and right now she had chosen to calm my restless blood and nerves. I barely stirred when the tray was brought up from the kitchen – as she had predicted, Athos had not forgotten us in our upstairs exile. Outside, somebody appeared to indulge in a game of lawn tennis. Inside, Marie and I were afloat on a sea of calm.

Dusk fell and I woke. Not before long, we heard a soft knock at the door, and Athos came in, wearing his elegant doublet of burgundy red and an expression that was smug and sheepish at the same time.

“Oh, good,” he said on beholding me. “You’re still here.”

“Did you expect me to leave?”

He shrugged with affected carelessness. “You have been known to.”

“Before the first cock-crow,” Marie interjected. Propping up her head on one arm, she was watching us with amused eyes. “Not at dusk.”

“Did your guests leave?” I asked.

“All but one.”

“Let me guess,” I said, but Marie interrupted me.

“Let us not quarrel about him now,” she said. “Better tell me what you have planned, Athos. When will you and Aramis set off for Paris?” According to our original plan, we should have left that afternoon, mingling with Athos’ guests as they were departing from Bragelonne. Two more riders would have gone unnoticed among the groups of men and women on horseback and in carriages as they trickled out through the gate.

“Tomorrow,” Athos promised. “I will get rid of him.”

“And if you don’t?”

“In that case, you go alone, Aramis. You can sneak out unnoticed, can you not?”

“Oh superb!” I flopped back into the cushions and stared up at the canopy. “It’s down to Rochefort, myself and Grimaud to get the duke out of prison, is it?”

“You don’t technically need me there,” Athos said, with the shadow of a smile lingering in the corners of his mouth. “But I am flattered that you believe me to be indispensable to the undertaking.”

“I am sure you would love to remain here with your flowers and your pet. And your parrot.”

“Don’t forget I will be here as well, Aramis,” Marie said.

“Yes, that is reassuring.” I looked up at Athos and saw that he was looking over my shoulder, at Marie, whose breath suddenly stirred my hair. A trail of goosebumps erupted on my neck, Athos’ eyes darkened and Marie pressed her lips to my temple. A powerful surge of lust shot through my languid limbs and into my loins. “Are you just going to stand there?”

Athos startled. He picked up a pair of silk gloves from the cabinet and dropped them on my chest. I felt Marie exhale against my skin, and then she began to slowly pull on the gloves, slipping her delicate fingers in one by one and flexing them enticingly above my face.

“Have you two planned this?” I asked.

Athos laughed. “Had we planned it, I would have brought mine.”

I pointed at the heap on the fauteuil, my discarded doublet, stockings, and, yes, my gloves. They were a bit too small for him, but Athos pulled them on nevertheless, watching my face as he did so. “This is a new approach,” he said slowly.

“Is this truly the cunning plan you two have devised to fool the Goddess of Family?”

“It appears to work just fine,” Marie trailed her fingertips over my chest and began to unlace my shirt.

“Just because nothing happened yet, doesn’t mean that it never will.”

“Oh Aramis,” Marie sighed. “Is this the philosophy by which you live? I don’t think so.”

I turned my head and kissed her mouth, pushing her lips open with mine and sucking her tongue in. She groaned and curled around me, to the extent that her corset permitted. On my other side, I felt Athos mould himself against me, pressing his hard cock into my thigh. His hand alighted on my chest likewise, and he shoved it under the fabric, dragging his gloved palm over my nipple. I gasped into Marie’s mouth and grabbed Athos’ wrist. Marie pulled back from our kiss and licked my lip with the tip of her tongue. “Take your shirt off, Aramis.”

I obeyed, pulling the garment over my head and tossing it in the direction of the fauteuil. Beside me, Athos had already got rid of his doublet and was kicking off his shoes. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and held him in place. “We should help Madame disrobe.”

“You do it,” he said, glancing at Marie and then back at me. “It’s safer.”

“And you two are all about safety, I know,” I said, rolling her onto her back. I loosened ribbons, undid buttons, took out two or three pins, pulled off her kerchief, her bodice, all the while feeling Athos’ gloved hand travel up and down my back, his fingers dancing over my vertebrae, fingertips dragging down my spine, his hand, his forearm slipping between my legs from behind, until I gasped and pushed back against him. His hand twisted between my thighs and he was palming my cock through my breeches.

“Aramis…” His hot mouth left damp trails between my shoulderblades, and then he pushed my hair aside and licked a path all the way up the nape of my neck. Heat tingled at the back of my skull and I shivered. Half beside, half beneath me, Marie spread her legs in invitation.

“My dress,” she said and I lifted myself off her. “Will you be my femme de chambre once more this evening?”

“How can you doubt it?” I said. “This evening, tomorrow, always. Command me.”

“You could demonstrate to M. le comte how to remove it. I believe he is not used to handling dresses of this epoch.”

Athos laughed softly into my shoulder. “I believe, duchess, I have proved my dexterity more than once, as far as the handling of your petticoats is concerned.” His right hand snaked around me and cupped her breast, and then it travelled down her body and dipped between her legs. Marie gasped and arched into it, and I caught her gasp with my mouth.

“Kneel up,” I muttered. She obeyed, swaying her hips into Athos’ touch as I helped her pull off her dress. Without her outer layers, separated from our eyes and our touch only through the thin fabric of her chemise, she looked delicate and vulnerable. But her eyes sparkled with mischief.

“It’s your turn, M. le comte. You are much too formally attired.”

I turned to Athos and tumbled him down. He was laughing into my mouth, clutching at my hair as I unbelted and unbuttoned him and pushed my hand into his breeches. In my grip, he appeared to swell even more, and I gave the hot, damp flesh a few firm strokes until he moaned and thrust up into me. “Take this off,” we both whispered at the same time. We pawed at each other’s clothes, and all of a sudden I found myself naked between both my lovers, both of whom still wore their shirts and an expression of great smugness, only slightly clouded by arousal.

Marie reached across me and pulled Athos down. “Now kiss,” she whispered hotly. Athos expelled a breath in a strangled laugh and pinned me down with his lips and teeth, delving into my mouth as if intent on devouring me then and there. His hand trailed around my ribs, fingers dragging through the grooves, and then it slithered across to pull Marie closer, until she was melting against me, her sharp, small teeth digging into the swell of my shoulder. “You truly are a lucky creature of the night,” she murmured, pressing lazy kisses along the line of my shoulder and up my neck. Beneath the silk of her glove, I felt her sharp nails as they scraped down my flank. She shoved her hand between my groin and Athos’, where his shirt had ridden up and we were grinding into each other. The silk of her gloves, the leather of Athos’ gloves, the fine cambric of their shirts, their lush, soft hair – my skin sang under the multitude of sensations. Athos was kissing me with a hand buried in my hair, caressing my forehead with his thumb.

“Marie,” I whispered, pulling back from him and turning to her, for her mouth had reached my ear and she lapped playfully at my earlobe and then bit into it. “You never kissed him.”

“No,” she whispered back.

I tightened my arm around her and pulled her closer. “Permit me to share,” I muttered, kissing her with the taste of Athos still coating my lips and tongue. I tangled my hand in her hair the way he had done with me, and I emulated the way he slid his tongue into my mouth, teasing me until I groaned and arched into him, the way Marie was now groaning and arching into me.

“Oh, Poseidon,” she breathed, pressing her forehead against mine when I released her.

“Aramis!” Athos stretched out on his side and wrapped his hand around my hipbone, pushing me into Marie with each sway of his body. His cock burned, hard and insistent, against my arse, and I arched my back into it. My own cock screwed itself slowly into the heat between Marie’s stomach and mine.

“Careful, Athos, stay where you are,” I warned him as I began to hitch up Marie’s chemise, baring her thighs to my touch. She whimpered into my mouth, her skin shivered under my fingers, and I twisted my wrist and thrust my hand between her legs from behind. The insides of her thighs were slick, and I dipped my fingers into the wet heat of her cunt. Marie groaned and tugged at my lip with her teeth like a feral siren.

I pulled my hand back and brought it to my lips, licking off her taste with long, languid laps of my tongue. Behind me, Athos was panting, rutting against my arse with harsh jolts of his hips, and I turned my head and licked across that beautiful mouth. He sucked in my tongue, but it wasn’t enough, and he seized my hand and sucked in my fingers instead.

“Have you ever tasted her before?” I slid my fingertips over the row of his teeth.

Athos locked his ebony-black gaze with mine. “Through her chemise,” he said huskily.

I grinned. “Would you like to watch?”

Marie laughed and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to my chest. “Come here, chéri,” she said, pulling her chemise all the way up to her waist and spreading her legs for me. I slithered down her body and lapped up the wetness that dripped out of her with the flat of my tongue.

Athos knelt up next to her, and Marie reached out and let his cock slip through her gloved hand. I licked her again, slower, deeper than before, and the shock that jolted through her body when my tongue flicked over her clit lifted her off the mattress. Athos groaned and fucked himself into her hand. She was coming apart already and I thrust in my fingers in time to feel her clench around them. Her body stiffened beneath my hands, and I swallowed one last time, panting into her wet, slippery skin. When I came up, Athos was kneading her breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers; he was flushed with arousal and desperately hard.

“For heaven’s sake, Aramis,” he growled, “kiss her.”

I stretched out atop her and pressed my lips to hers. “Aramis,” she murmured, smiling, “let him touch you.”

“All in good time,” I muttered back and then gasped, because Athos had cupped my arse and pressed me deeper into the crevice between Marie’s thighs.

I turned my head, pulled him down by his hair and kissed him again, letting him suck off Marie’s essence off my lips. “Aramis, I-” he stopped short, bewildered, and I stared at him, trying to decipher the language of his murky eyes. Marie kissed my throat and twirled a strand of Athos’ hair around her finger.

“What now, count?” she asked. “Would you like to watch us fuck?”

“No!” It came out quickly, before he could have thought about it. Athos frowned and retracted: “Not yet. I want to touch you,” he added, looking down at Marie wistfully.

She smiled. “Touch Aramis.” She was strong, our nymph; flexing beneath me, she dislodged me and we rolled over, on our sides. Athos’ arm around me, his long fingers curled around Marie’s slim ribcage, and my cock glided easily between her wet thighs, just as Athos’ cock slipped between mine. Marie tugged the sleeve of her shirt down, pulled her glove up to her elbow and wrapped her hand around Athos’ forearm. “Don’t hold back on my account,” she said with that familiar smile of old that belied her angelic features.

Athos’ hips slammed into mine hard enough to tear a groan out of me as I drove into Marie’s body. She gasped and clung to me. “Again,” she moaned.

Heat scorched me as Athos groaned into my ear, fucking himself between my legs as I fucked myself between Marie’s. Her luminous eyes were full of an otherworldly light, and I stared into it as if into a flame, until the world went black and I had to close my eyes, dizzy, falling into a kaleidoscope of swirling shapes and colours. My cock twitched and swelled, spilling itself into the heat between her legs. “ _Aramis_.” Athos panted into my neck, and he, too, was spending himself, clinging to me, clinging to Marie, as we slowed and then stilled, reverberating with each other’s heartbeats.

“I believe we’ve ruined your linen, count,” Marie said eventually. She had pulled off one of her gloves and brushed her fingers over the drenched sheets that lay rumpled beneath and around us.

“At least there’s no blood,” Athos said, but he kissed my neck at the same time, and the tender pressure of his lips removed the sting from his words.

I smiled, carried Marie’s bare hand to my mouth and kissed her fingertips. She smiled in return, the saucy nymph, and thrust her hand between her own legs. When she pulled it back up, it was glistening with moisture. She trailed it over my lower lip, and I tasted all three of us at once. “Kiss him,” she said.

Athos raised himself on his elbow and leaned over me. When he sucked in my lip, I hissed, for it was swollen and raw. “Forgive me,” Athos whispered, alternating between soothing licks and gentle kisses. “I’ve forgotten how delicate chyortik is.”

“You’d do better to remember, M. le comte,” the nymph said, luxuriating against my side and trailing the nails of her bare up and down my thigh, skipping over my hip and up my flank.

“I shall,” Athos fell back into the pillows and stretched out against me. “Thank you for reminding me, Madame.”

“It was a pleasure.”

I shook my head, shaken by silent laughter, and caught her hand. “You’d better put your glove back on, Marie. Lest your hand should slip. Unless you wish us to depart now.” I looked at Athos. “It’s probably safe to sneak out, isn’t it, count? D’Artagnan is surely asleep.”

“If he was able to sleep,” Athos said, and I could have sworn I could see Rochefort’s diabolical smile light up his features. “I gave him the room under this one.”

“You deviant,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.

The wicked grin deepened. “You like it.”

Marie gasped. “Good heavens! I sincerely hope you’re not planning on leaving me now.” She clutched a fistful of Athos’ shirt as if intent on detaining him bodily should he wish to make his escape. “I have thought of one or two things to entertain you if you could be persuaded to stay.”

I smiled and kissed her on the forehead, while Athos lifted her gloved hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly. “Madame, your ideas are always worth hearing.”

***

**Château Bragelonne, 28th of May 1648**

Rochefort, in his great escape from my salon window, had trampled the iris beds. He and his tennis balls were expected at Vincennes, and one could not blame him for rushing off without saying farewell. It was standing over this trampled ground, innocent victim of our cabals, that d’Artagnan found me the following morning.

“Did you sleep well, my dear d’Artagnan?” I inquired, remaining ever the polite and solicitous host. Above our heads, no doubt with their elfin ears pressed to the window, Marie and Aramis were still ensconced in Marie’s bedroom. 

“Dreadfully,” he yawned. “I know not whence, but I was assaulted by the strangest dreams. In some of them, I was being chased by a giant bloodsucking bat. I tried to outrun it, but my feet sank into the ground as if it turned to quicksand.” I remained expressionless. Aramis had been in bed next to me all night, and I did not believe he slept a wink. How could he have visited d’Artagnan’s dreams in his flittermouse form? “Then in others, I was swimming across a large body of water, a lake, or a sea, I was not sure. My ship, it seemed, was on fire and sinking into the cold, dark waves. I seemed to choke as if from drowning.” I frowned, thinking of Marie’s kin. Marie too had spent the night in our bed, quite awake. Something felt wrong about these dreams, almost as if they were too clear, too prophetic to be random. “But you seem well, my friend,” he addressed me. “I find you looking better than ever. And very concerned with local flora, it seems. Have you become a tulip fancier in your advanced age?”

I startled from the flower beds and my own thoughts. 

“In the country people alter,” I smiled at him innocently. “One gets to like, without knowing it, all those beautiful objects that God causes to spring from the earth, which are despised in cities.” I was thinking of Marie as I said so, and I turned to face the windows so that d’Artagnan’s back would be towards them. Predictably, she appeared like a vision, blew me a kiss and withdrew behind the curtain. I did not see Aramis, but I did not need to see him to feel his presence.

“I found Porthos much the same. Except, perhaps, quite a bit richer than when we knew him in Paris.” 

“Wonderful Porthos,” I smiled thinking of my Titanic cousin. “I am glad you have seen him. Friendship throws out deep roots in honest hearts, d'Artagnan. Believe me, it is only the evil-minded who deny friendship; they cannot understand it.” I paused, weighing my next words. “And Aramis?”

“I have seen him also,” d’Artagnan replied with a dark cloud passing over his features. “He seemed rather cold to me.”

Did he? I thought back to the previous night I spent, my body pressed against Aramis’ body. He had not seemed, nor felt, particularly cold to me. I almost asked whether he had not caught Aramis on an empty stomach.

“Aramis, you know, is naturally cold,” I finally replied, realizing a response was called for, and preferably one of reassurance. “And then he’s always involved in intrigues,” and I added quickly, “With women.” 

"I believe he is at this moment in a very complicated one," said d'Artagnan, no doubt in an attempt to get my own tongue wagging.

I held my tongue and lifted my eyes towards the window again, where I beheld Aramis with a look of such exasperation that I worried he was about to pull out his magnificent hair. 

I decided to take d’Artagnan on a tour of the rest of my domains, to at least allow the demon and the nymph the chance to leave their hiding place of my best guest chamber. As we promenaded, I gleaned from d’Artagnan what I already knew from Aramis and Rochefort: he was working for the new Cardinal, that miserly upstart who simultaneously brought shame and infamy upon both France and Italy, and on the very Queen by association. I could not even hold back from expressing my honest opinion of him to the Gascon, going as far as to call Mazarin a pedant who has tried to put on his own head a crown which he stole from under a pillow. D’Artagnan blanched noticeably and bit his rather virile and hirsute mustache as we spoke. I had disappointed him, it seemed, but he too had disappointed me, for I had hoped he’d know me better than to insult me by offering me employment with a gnat such as _il stronzo_.

Upon our arrival back at the château in time for breakfast, one of my servants brought me two letters, which I devoured whilst d’Artagnan watched, buttering his toast with a militant air of a man on a mission. In fact, he could not retrain himself from jumping up several times while watching me peruse my correspondence. The first letter was from Aramis, and it took all my considerable self-control to read it without changing my expression.

_My dear count, how many times do you suppose I can give my cousin Marie that which you can never give her until we can expect you to rejoin us? The seamstress is insatiable and given to loud bouts of apoplexy. I am well aware of how dearly you must have missed your pet of yesteryear, but had you followed my advice and sent him packing with words of encouragement, I would still find strength within my body to service you as I have serviced her. Your loss, entirely. A._

I refolded that letter neatly and placed it onto the table between myself and d’Artagnan. I could see the struggle he faced in suppressing the urge to reach for it. In the meantime, I opened Marie’s note.

_My sweet friend, it is not very gentlemanly of you to leave me in the company of a lapsed priest. He has already threatened to eat me on several occasions and with, I believe, at least two distinct meanings. It would not be very ladylike of me to allow myself to be thusly consumed whilst under your roof. But do not believe whatever that fiend may have written you. His mouth, like Pandora’s box, is full of evil and lies. As you have yourself once told me, it is only his body that ever speaks the truth. Do come upstairs, so we can discuss this at length. Impatiently yours, M._

I was about to apologize to d’Artagnan and make some excuse when the servant came in again, this time with a message for the Gascon. It was then my turn to study him as he read his orders, no doubt signed by _il stronzo_ himself. Something about the handwriting on the envelope just screamed “Jackass!”

Not surprisingly, d’Artagnan made his excuses immediately upon receipt of the missive, brief as it was. He was off to Paris, he said, and could not tarry a moment longer. He did, however, tarry long enough to ask me about Grimaud’s whereabouts.

“I have lent him to a friend,” I replied, in the hope that very soon I could count the duke de Beaufort as a very dear friend, indeed.

D’Artagnan and I embraced warmly and I stood between the rows of chestnuts, watching as he rode away. Seemingly coming out of a tree trunk, Aramis walked up to me before the cloud of dust from the Gascon’s horse’s hooves disappeared in the distance. 

“Do you think he…”

“Suspects anything? Not about me,” I smiled at him. “You, he’s not so sure about.”

“D’Artagnan has always loved you the most,” Aramis snarled, flashing his fangs. “And what did he make of all this?” His eyes traced my face from chin to brow. 

“It is as you predicted: he is not quite sure what to make of it. But he did tell me I looked better than ever.”

“He's right. You look gorgeous.”

“You realize we must leave immediately,” I said, clearing my throat in a moment of sudden embarrassment. 

“I’ve already had the horses saddled.”

“And Marie?”

“She will remain here until we send word the deed is done. It won’t be safe for her in Paris.”

“Good, then we’re of the same mind.”

He turned to head in the direction of the stable but I caught his arm.

“That was a dangerous and childish game you two played,” I said sternly, pulling him in so that I could press my lips to his. His eyes widened in surprise and then closed, just as his mouth opened to allow me to snake my tongue in and lick over the rows of his teeth.

“Testing for nymph?” he smirked.

“Not even a little,” I grinned and pulled away from him. “To horse, d’Herblay! The Fronde needs you!”

“You’re such an asshole, my dear count.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Bois de Vincennes, 31st May 1648**

Through the thicket of trees, we could just make out the ominous tower of the Château de Vincennes, rising into the sky. That night, it housed a royal prisoner, who intended with God’s aid (albeit not knowing which God) to flee its imposing fortress. In less than two decades, it would house Nicolas Fouquet, who would not be so lucky. But that is what you nowadays would call a “spoiler.”

Separating from the others, who would wait for us in the Bois de Vincennes, Rochefort, Aramis and I rode up to the very edge of the foliage, remaining invisible whilst observing the fortress. The clock had not yet struck seven. Our horses and the riders fidgeted impatiently and I could only imagine how slowly those minutes ticked away inside the prison, where Grimaud and the duke awaited rescue. The Trojan pie had been served; all we could do was wait.

Aramis and I exchanged a look and he circled his horse to my other side, separating himself from Rochefort, who seemed more alert than all fifty of the gathered cavaliers combined, fueled on by his desire for vengeance.

“Any minute now,” Aramis said and I nodded. “What is that? What?” He gestured in my direction. “That face. You’re worried about Grimaud?”

I smiled. It was no use hiding my thoughts from him for no one in existence could read my moods as well as Aramis, with the notable exception of my Grigori.

“I was thinking of something d’Artagnan said before he departed,” I replied. Indeed, whatever worry I may have had about Grimaud was pushed aside by a new worry that had grown from a seed planted a few days ago in Bragelonne. “He had visited Porthos.”

“No,” Aramis shook his head. “You don’t think… do you?”

“Porthos was… He… I worry about him,” I confessed. “His ball of light has gone out years ago. He hasn’t been his best self lately.”

“But join Mazarin?”

“He’d be joining a friend.”

“ _We_ are his friends, Athos!”

“He was pretty sick of us, last time we all met. Or don’t you remember?” I smiled sadly, thinking back to that tumultuous night in Bragelonne some five years prior. Aramis frowned. “He is kind-hearted and easily led astray,” I added.

“I spent a century and a half sailing the seven seas with Porthos,” Aramis said, his voice firm and steady. His hand touched my own in a gesture of reassurance. “He can take care of himself.”

“In the Mediterranean, perhaps,” I protested. “The air of northern France dulls him. The sun is not the same here,” I explained. Aramis chewed on his lips. “When you and I are done here, playing pawns in nymphic schemes, I am taking him back home.”

“To Greece?” Aramis startled. “You can’t go back to Greece! What about your family? What of _Eris_? She can manifest there!”

“What is she going to do? Jump on my cock with Porthos there?”

“That is what she essentially did the last time!” I could see Aramis shaking in the saddle. This was a terrible time to be having this discussion. Although, I had to concede - he had a point.

“All right, then you take him,” I suggested.

Rochefort’s voice, cutting through the night air, drew our attention back to the game afoot: “The signal!” 

“We’ll talk about this later,” Aramis’ hand pressed at my shoulder and we pulled up to the moat alongside Rochefort, each of us holding a spare horse by the reins.

“They’re descending,” Rochefort pointed to the wall of the fortress. 

My own eyes pierced the darkness, making out the wiry, familiar figure, as it clung to the rope. The first one to descend the wall was Grimaud. The figure remaining in the ramparts had to be his Grace.

“He’s letting Grimaud descend first,” Aramis’ voice was layered with admiration. “That’s downright decent of him, Athos. We’ve picked a prince of the blood worth dying for!”

“So to speak,” Rochefort snickered in reply.

At that moment, we exhaled a communal gasp: the rope tore, sending Grimaud plummeting to the ground below.

“Hera’s cunt!” 

I leapt off my horse and jumped into the moat after my servant. Behind me, I heard Aramis and Rocheford dismount. My poor Grigori was unconscious, but his pulse was steady. I did not need to give instructions, for Aramis had already tossed me the rope, which I affixed under Grimaud’s armpits and tugged on it to let them know it was safe to pull up. A part of me thought that I must have personally knocked my faithful familiar on the head harder than that fall in the past, but that was the part of me that refused to contemplate the alternative. 

Having made sure Grimaud had been secured, I walked over to the wall and spoke to the man on the ramparts. "Descend, my lord. There are only fifteen feet more from the top down here, and the grass is soft."

The five minutes it took for the duke to descend felt interminable. I glanced over my shoulder to the other side of the moat, where Aramis and Rochefort had secured the unconscious Grimaud to one of the spare horses. Aramis signalled that all was well and my heart clenched in gratitude. At last, the duke de Beaufort was at my side, and together we climbed up the slope of the moat until we reached the others. Rochefort’s hand clenched the duke’s; Aramis’ hand clenched mine as he pulled me up from the moat. Wasting no time, we mounted the horses.

"Gentlemen," the duke proclaimed with the air given to only Kings and Gods, "I will thank you later; now we have not a moment to lose. On, then! On! Those who love me, follow me!"

Aramis and I exchanged a look, his smile reflecting my own, and we spurred on our horses, pulling the poor Grimaud and his steed along with us, as we joined the cavalcade. At the head of our small troop, Beaufort shouted his freedom to the four Anemoi.

***

**The King's High Road**

The chase. The blood. The fallen horses. My sword crossed with another’s expert blade. The horror of recognition; the moments of panic; the duke’s favor in letting them both go free.

My head was abuzz from the confrontation even as I walked away.

“There is only one man in the world who could stop me, and fatality puts this man in my way!” the Gascon had said. 

I drew my gloved hand over my brow, drying the drops of perspiration that had formed there. A sudden cold seeped into my chest where I had exposed it to d’Artagnan’s epee. I could imagine how he felt. Of all the men Mazarin could have set to chase after us, he had chosen the one man I could never forgive myself for hurting: Porthos. That d’Artagnan had pulled him into his own political fiasco seemed a joke of Olympian proportions. And then, he had accused _me_ of delivering a blow to his honor, when he was the one who had sold what honor he had to _il stronzo_ of the lowest sort!

“To Hell with every single Gascon in the world!” Aramis hissed next to me. “But your favorite pet especially - to the ninth circle!” His hand was suddenly at the small of my back. “Remount, Athos!”

My eyes scanned for Grimaud, who, conveniently no longer concussed, apparated at my side. His composed face told me he awaited my command.

“Take those two horses to Messieurs d’Artagnan and Porthos,” I ordered. “And return to Blois to report to Madame la duchesse the outcome of our undertaking.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” I sighed. 

Aramis gazed at me with open disapproval.

“What? Am I supposed to let Porthos walk back to Paris?” I asked, resentful of his judgement, but envious of his composure. 

He shook his head and spurred his horse onwards, rejoining the duke at the top of the cavalcade. Of the fifty of us, four lay dead in the dust of the King’s Highway, but that was a small price to pay for the kind of rendezvous we just lived through. There were no more interruptions until we reached Vendôme, where the duke was to remain until puppet masters pulling his strings would reel him back to Paris. 

Before we were given leave by the duke, he inquired solicitously after my Grigori.

“Please do make sure he’s well attended to, my dear count,” Beaufort said with eyes so wet that I thought he heart must have quite melted, “I’ve grown so fond of that sweet man! In that prison, surrounded by hopeless misery, your Grimaud appeared to me a veritable Antinous!”

Aramis bit his lips and avoided the duke’s eyes as we both kissed his hand farewell. As for myself, I had played my part in this farce worthy of Aristophanes, and only hoped it had not cost me the friendship of the man I thought of as my brother. 

As for the Gascon, well, I knew a reckoning was unavoidable when Aramis and I stopped for a respite on our way back to Paris. My flittermouse had held his tongue long enough, but his sneer was unmistakable and his fangs must have been itching.

“All right then, out with it,” I said, sitting in a quiet roadside tavern. The proprietor had offered us wine, which Aramis alone drank, if only to spite me. His hand clenched feverishly around the cup. “Aramis, you’re boiling over. Come, tell me what an ass I am and how everything is my fault.”

I raised an eyebrow and he narrowed his eyes.

“You flaunt your immortality too blatantly,” he finally spoke.

This was unexpected. We have not had this discussion since the Bastion Saint-Gervais. Then again, we had also not been in battle together for some time. When we had moved against our unknown assailants the previous night, it had felt natural, right. As if I had felt the touch of Ares on me again. And Aramis and I had always shared a single unified mind when it came to combat, at least in the past. 

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“You fired a musket at d’Artagnan on horseback. A human would have suffered from the recoil.”

“I have very powerful thighs,” I replied, giving him a taunting look.

“It was a bit unnecessary, don’t you think? You are pretending to be a man close to fifty.”

“In my defense, I was trying to dispatch our pursuers the quickest way possible.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Come, Aramis, enough of this. Tell me what you’re really thinking!”

“And then you flashed your nipples at him!” he struck out like a cobra.

“Ah, there it is.”

“Truly! Was it really necessary to expose your breast and offer that he run you through? Or had you been feeling nostalgic about Marienburg?”

“He wouldn’t have done it!”

“But what if he had? Do you never think about how unpleasant it might be _for me_ to have to play hide and go seek with your not-quite-dead body while waiting for you to grow a new heart?”

“No more unpleasant, I imagine, than that time you had to cremate my body and carry my ashes up Olympus.”

I had gone too far. He had leapt up from his seat, fire blazing in his eyes. His fingers clenched but he did not reach for his weapon.

“Aramis,” I hung my head in shame. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that.” He remained standing, his eyes fixed upon the road.

“You are forgiven,” he finally said, his mouth drawn in a line. “And now, I suppose, you insist that we proceed to Place Royale.”

“You were the one who insisted, nay _demanded_ , that we should meet them,” I reminded him.

“You realize that my intention is to eat him.”

“And you surely realize that my intention is to stop you.”

“To what end?”

“All is not lost, Aramis. D’Artagnan doesn’t have to be our enemy. _Porthos_ will not be our enemy! Remember Porthos?”

“You were the one who said his ball of sunshine, and consequently his brain, had grown dim!”

“I never said that about his brain.”

“You implied it.”

“It would explain… _this_ ,” I conceded.

Aramis sat back down, looking as resigned as he permitted himself to look, and his hand brushed against my thigh.

“Let us make haste then,” he said, “if you don’t want to be late to our appointment.”

“We’re not finished talking,” I said, realizing that he had deployed evasive maneuvers without actually promising me that no harm should come to our friends.

“We shall speak more once we’re in Paris,” he replied, emptying his glass of wine. “Come along, count. We are rebels now, you and I, and rebels do not spend long hours reclining at roadside taverns. It is a sure way to get yourself thrown into the Bastille.” He paused and gave me a tentative smile. “Unless, of course, it is your desire to go there for personal reasons.”

“Not at the moment,” I smiled back at him, rising from my seat. “I told you earlier, my intention is to go to Greece with Porthos, now that our part in this plot is over. That is, if he still feels like calling himself my friend.”

“It is always some death wish with you, M. le comte.”

“Must be what attracted me to you in the first place,” I threw out carelessly and immediately wished I could take it back. 

He did not speak to me for the rest of the journey to Paris, and when we did arrive, he had forbidden me to disarm in the name of the Fronde. His distrust towards both d’Artagnan and Porthos ran deep and he referred to my own sentiments as an “amiable weakness.” As much as what he had said pained me, I saw some reason in it. But I also thought back to what Porthos had said to me those five years back, that Aramis had changed. Had his heart grown so cold and dried-up as a husk as to cut loose old bonds of friendship, where mine hadn’t? Where in my heart I felt a desire to salvage something I held dear with the two men who had become our opponents in this misadventure, in Aramis I found only an urge for self-preservation. 

And then, a horrible thought occurred to me: I had done this to him. If he had built a fortress around his heart, I was the only one to blame. That realization cut through my mind like a blade, and my hand had twitched towards the man at my side to stop him from going further, but it had been too late.

“They’re here,” Aramis announced and quickly dismounted. 

Porthos and d’Artagnan, in their military cloaks and accompanied by a musketed Planchet, awaited by the entrance at rue Sainte Catherine. I dismounted as well, and ordered Bazin to tether the horses where the others had stationed theirs. Before long, Aramis had the key from the Hôtel de Rohan at hand, with no one to bat an eyelash at his temerity, and the four of us were penetrating through the gate of the Place Royale. 

Under the light of the moon, d’Artagnan’s cloak lifted to reveal a veritable arsenal in his belt, causing Aramis to smirk and gloat and my heart to sink.

“Please try not to eat him,” I whispered to my companion, as he followed me in and relocked the gate behind us.

***

**Paris, Place Royale, 1st June 1648**

Did Athos ever know how much power he had over me? His gentle, whispered entreaty echoed through my mind and I recited the words in my head like a liturgy. _‘Don’t eat him, don’t eat him, don’t eat him.’_ Blood, blood everywhere; blood boiling in my veins, blood on my bitten lips, the blood of d’Artagnan calling out to me, red mist rising before my eyes like miasmic vapours. Had it been the sun and not the moon that shone down on us, d’Artagnan’s life would have been forfeit, for even the most fleeting tendril of my shadow would have sucked his lifeforce out of him.

I kept my countenance when the Gascon reproached Athos, of all people, for not being possessed of a right and honest heart, for breaking their friendship and for treating him like a child. Athos rebuked him then, but all that he effected was to make d’Artagnan attack me in turn. I rammed my nails into my palms with such force that I felt their sharp edges even through the leather of my gloves. Was d’Artagnan out of his mind? How dared that little weasel, who had hunted me down expressly for the purpose of sounding me out; who had admitted amidst much hilarity that he might soon be charged by the cardinal with my arrest; who pretended to ride off and then spied on me from the bushes; whose entire conversation had been built on lies, trickery, deceit and secrets – how _dared_ that Pharisee question my conduct and insult my honour?

He concluded his tirade by calling my conduct worthy of a pupil of Jesuits. While not in itself an insult (for, unlike the musketeers, the Jesuits did not suffer the stupid among their ranks), it was spoken in so jeering a tone that my hand alighted on the hilt of my sword of its own accord. It was a courtesy to Athos and Porthos, for had I been alone with d’Artagnan, I would not have bothered with a sword and torn his throat open with my fangs. Steel is for gentlemen.

It was Athos who prevented bloodshed. Skilful as ever, he appealed to d’Artagnan’s nobler feelings (of whose existence I had my doubts), and pointed out that the Gascon’s heart had been noble enough to enable a friendship of twenty years. It was a neat feint and adroitly executed in order to soothe the infuriated Gascon, for d’Artagnan had cared so little for his friends that he never attempted to find out what happened to them until he sensed that they may serve to advance his fortune. Athos had always been adept at steering d’Artagnan by praising his real or imagined abilities to high heaven or by telling him off for misbehaving. In short: by treating him like a child.

Tonight, however, d’Artagnan was too riled, his Gascon pride too wounded, to be reined in. Spitting black and yellow bile, he attacked me anew, and threw in my face that he knew of my affiliation with Madame de Longueville and her party. My blood froze in my veins and was replaced by liquid ire that rushed into the very tips of my fingers. “What are you meddling with?” I snarled, struggling to keep my fangs retracted.

“I never meddle save with what concerns me,” d’Artagnan lied. “And I know how to make believe that I haven’t seen what does not concern me. But I hate hypocrites,” the little hypocrite continued, “And here’s a gentleman who’s of the same opinion as myself.” He pointed at Porthos, who stood by his side with his hand on his sword, drawing it against me.

Porthos’ face chilled me. For over one hundred and fifty years, he and I had been comrades, brothers, and now he was looking at me as if he didn’t know me. Something ancient and terrible lurked behind those dark eyes. I wondered at d’Artagnan’s blindness, for surely anyone could see that it was not a man who loomed against the night sky, but a Titan. A being more fearsome and primal than any human could ever be. He was the son of Sun, and the Sun was, as we now knew in this age of discovery and science, a blazing ball of fire, a celestial body of unimaginable potency. There was nothing even remotely human about the Sun, which resembled nothing more than an inferno suspended in infinite space. Whereas Athos was the product of human faith and divine grace, the origins of Porthos were deeper and darker, his existence impossible to the rational mind. Athos saw it too, for he had long realised that Porthos’ powers, his very humanity, were tied to the ball of sunshine bestowed on him by Helios: that solar quintessence anthropomorphised by human faith. Magic was faith and faith was magic; it had made the impossible possible and had harnessed the unimaginable by giving it a human form. As its potency waned, Porthos was slowly reverting to his true nature. The Titans were powers that ruled the universe, but they were mindless, voiceless, lacking reason and emotions. D’Artagnan, the fool, did not see it. His mundane mind was unable to comprehend the essence of Porthos’ being. The idea that d’Artagnan had fooled himself into thinking he had tamed a Titan would have made me laugh, had it not made my blood curdle with terror, even as it was boiling with rage.

I started back and drew my sword, d’Artagnan bent forward, ready either to attack or to stand on his defence.

At that moment, Athos extended his hand with the air of supreme command which only he possessed, drew out his sword and the scabbard at the same time, broke the blade in the sheath on his knee and threw the pieces to his right. Then, turning to me, he said in a low voice: “Aramis. Break your sword.”

I froze.

“It must be done,” Athos said. He caught sight of my face, of my mouth, my lips parted in a snarl, and added in a lower and gentler tone that trickled into my brain like poisoned honey: “I wish it.”

Under the spell of that somnorific incantation, the ice of my blood melted and rushed through me; my face, my lips grew white. My hands acted of their own volition and snapped the serpent blade in two. I then folded my arms and stood, trembling with rage.

Athos’ quiet command had a similar effect on d’Artagnan and Porthos, for they both drew back and Porthos put his sword back into the sheath. But Athos was not done with us yet. Raising his hand to Heaven, as if to invoke his Thunderous Father, he made a vow to bind us all together with unbreakable ties. “Never, I swear before God, who sees us, and who, in the darkness of this night hears us, never shall my sword cross yours, never my eye express a glance of anger, nor my heart a throb of hatred at you.” I ground my teeth, for in that moment Athos spoke not only for himself, but for all four of us, like a priest reading Mass speaks on behalf of his congregation. He was doing it to prevent me from killing d’Artagnan in righteous rage. But all was not lost: the vow was nothing but words as long as no sacrifice to the gods had been made. As long as no blood had been proffered on the altar, symbolic or otherwise.

“We shed, we mingled _our blood_ together,” Athos appeared to have read my mind and I hissed, biting my bruised lip again. It was not merely love and friendship that he invoked, but bloodguilt. “There may be yet a bond between us closer even than that of friendship: the bond of crime. For we four once did condemn, judge and slay a human being whom we had not any right to cut off from this world, although apparently fitter for hell than for this life.”

I shuddered. In spite of my reprimands, Athos kept flaunting his divine nature blatantly in front of d’Artagnan. ‘Slay a _human being_ ’? How much more obvious could he have made it that he was not, in fact, a human being himself?

He made us swear friendship. He made me apologise to Porthos for having crossed swords with him, just as he apologised to d’Artagnan for the same offence. At last, he looked at me, looked me straight in the eye and said “Repeat my words, Aramis, and then, if you desire it, and if they desire it, let us separate forever from our old friends.”

There was only one answer I could give, and, after a moment of silence during which I composed my face, my feelings and my fangs, I obeyed. “I swear that I no longer bear animosity to those who were once my friends,” I said through clenched teeth. “I regret that I ever crossed swords with you, Porthos. I swear not only that it shall never again be pointed at your breast, but that in the bottom of my heart there will never in future be the slightest hostile sentiment.” I did not look at d’Artagnan, nor did I address him, for Athos had not asked me to. He knew me too well to demand the impossible. “Now, Athos, come.”

Athos started and would have followed me willingly, had not d’Artagnan interfered again by throwing himself into his arms with declarations, promises and avowals. “My son!” that deviant exclaimed for his part, pressing d’Artagnan in his arms and apparently intent on taunting me to run them both through with my sword as they stood entwined. It was Porthos who saved us all from harm, for he proclaimed his love for us, burst into tears and pulled me into a bone-shattering embrace.

Oh, he was cunning, that pagan godling who never lied. Against his incantations, which summoned honour and nobility, we were powerless. I should have been prepared, for he had told me only a few days previously that he would remind d’Artagnan of the virtue and value of friendship. He had made good on his pledge and forced d’Artagnan into submission – and us with him. And so we found ourselves swearing a solemn oath that we would always honour the bonds of friendship, even in the very lust and music of the hottest carnage, while Athos smiled with ineffable pleasure. “It is then all settled. Gentlemen, your hands. Are you not somewhat Christians?”

“We will be on this occasion, if only to be faithful to our oath,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

“Ah, I'm ready to do what you will,” said Porthos, whose attitude towards the Christian faith had remained unchanged ever since the miraculous conversion of the fearsome baby-eating pirate on Rhodes. “Even to swear by Mahomet. Devil take me if I’ve ever been so happy as at this moment.”

“Has not one of you a cross?” asked Athos.

I smiled, flashing him my teeth, and drew from my vest a cross of diamonds that hung around my neck by a chain of pearls and that had adorned the white bosom of the duchesse de Longueville not ten days ago.

“Ah, traitor!” muttered d'Artagnan, leaning toward me and whispering in my ear the moment we had sealed our oath like good Christians. “You have made us swear on the crucifix of a Frondeuse.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're sorry, we're so sorry. They made us do it.

**Paris, 1st June 1648**

As Porthos and d’Artagnan disappeared and Aramis and I remounted our steeds, I ventured a tentative glance at my companion. He would not meet my eyes, his jaw clenched and his lips pressed together tightly as if trying to prevent his fangs from springing forth. His fingers tightened feverishly about the reins and I saw him about to steer his horse away from mine when my hand shot out and grasped his arm.

“Where are you going, Aramis?”

“Let go of me.”

“Whatever it is you’re thinking about doing - don’t,” I pleaded, tightening my fingers around his flexed muscle.

“You’ve asked me for enough favors tonight, have you not?” His voice dripped from his mouth like sap from a pine tree, slow and somehow sticky.

“You’re going to kill someone and get yourself discovered. You asked me not to endanger myself for the sake of our party; now I beg you the same.”

“What a joke!” he exploded.

“Please,” I whispered, looking up and down the street with worry lest someone overhear. “Come back with me to the place I have rented on rue Guénégaud. It isn’t far.”

“You think you’re going to fuck this rage out of me tonight, _count_? You overestimate your sexual prowess and underestimate my rage!”

The sap of his voice stuck to me like glue. Instead of pushing me away, it pulled me nearer. I had turned my horse to block his way.

“Come with me, Aramis.”

I could see the struggle evident in each tick of his facial muscles. Alone with me at last, would he attack me as he could not attack d’Artagnan? I had not seen him so suffused with bloodlust in quite some time.

“Please, Aramis,” I repeated. “Come home with me.”

He held my gaze and, after a few long moments, graced me with a barely perceptible nod. “Get lost,” he snapped over his shoulder in the direction of Bazin.

“But, Master…” the homunculus tried to protest.

“I said - get lost!”

I watched with no small amount of pleasure as Aramis’ church dog slithered away into the night. Then, Aramis nodded his assent and followed me. We rode in silence, traversing Île de la Cité, the bell towers of Notre Dame looming above our heads with their laughing gargoyles. The night was clear and the stars shone in the sky the same way Aramis’ eyes glowed in the sockets of his exquisite skull, like black diamonds. He had bitten his lips so red, I thought blood would surely burst forth anon. I wondered when the last time was that he had actually fed on blood. 

I lit as many candles as I could, while he stood by the door of the apartment, watching me as if calculating whether he could truly hurt me if he tried. The lights illuminated the space around us, making his shadow fall backwards against the wall. It loomed over us both as we faced each other.

“Thank you,” I finally spoke.

“For coming here?”

“No, not only.” I tried to smile, but his sphinx-like expression would not entertain any of my mirth. “I can imagine how difficult it was for you not to… well…” My hand rose and fell helplessly. “But what could we do? Porthos was there, too.”

“If only it was merely about Porthos!” he finally veered on me. “Of all the people in the world, you have to imprint on the damned Gascon, who causes you nothing but trouble! I’d think that after twenty years he would have turned to dust in your heart, but no! I see you love him as ardently as ever!”

“It is not love to have no wish to see a man dead, Aramis,” I tried to keep my voice from rising. 

Aramis’ nostrils flared and his eyes flashed with a dangerous fire again. “You would do _anything_ for him!” he fumed.

“I _like_ him, Aramis! I see qualities in him that are perhaps but a mirror to your own, for some of what you hate so much about him is the same that I admire in you.”

“You would compare me to that rapist! After everything? After all we’ve been through?” He seemed on the verge of boiling over and I did not know how to mollify him. Yet, I wanted to. I wanted nothing more than to put my arms around him and make everything right again. His eyes, however, told me that at my merest touch, I was liable to lose a hand.

“Aramis, you are my dearest friend in the world, and there is no one I respect or care for more.” I wished to say more, but he interrupted me in another passionate outburst.

“I have learned to live with your _esteem_ in place of your affection, Athos, but when I see how freely your affection is bestowed upon others…!” He stopped and bit his lips. I took a step towards him but the look in his eyes stopped me again. 

“Aramis,” I began to say, “we did the right thing tonight.”

“Not him!” his lips trembled and he turned away from me. “You can choose to love whom you wish, Athos. I know I do not hold sway over your heart. But, for the sake of whatever you hold holy, not _him_!”

I placed my hand on his elbow but he tore away from me. 

“Aramis, what did I do?” I asked, feeling in the recesses of my soul that I had wronged him deeply, but not being able to pinpoint the exact moment when or why. 

“I know you can’t..,” his back was turned to me but his shoulders shrugged with a definitive sigh. I watched in horror as he sank his fingernails into the pink palms of his hands till they drew blood. “I know you don’t love me anymore. But d’Artagnan…”

Before he could finish, both my hands were grasping his shoulders and turning him about face. “No, that’s not true,” I whispered hotly, my heart beating wildly, pumping burst after burst of boiled blood like molten lava into my veins. “That’s not true, Aramis. How could it be true?” He avoided my eyes but I cupped his face with both of my hands and forced him to look at me. His eyes burned like coals. “How could I not love you?” I said, feeling a tremor spread through my limbs as the words fell from my tongue, simultaneously light as air yet heavy as stones. “How could I ever love anyone else but you?”

“Athos,” he shook his head and tried to draw away, but my fingers dug into the back of his skull to keep him in place. I pressed my forehead against his and felt my shiver spread from my body and into him. “Don’t… don’t coddle me…”

I held him tightly against me, my lips grazed along his high cheek bones. “I _do_ ,” I whispered. “I do love you. I do.”

His lips moved against my own in an answering whisper. “Don’t hurt me,” he sighed, a soft prayer that revealed more of himself than I have seen in years.

“Don’t break my heart,” I smiled at him sadly, and wondered if he realized how terrified I was of him, what it would take for me to place my heart into the palms of his hands again. How long had I been feeling this way, I wondered, and why did it take me this long to admit it? Attachment, desire, _dukkha_. It did not matter. I wanted him, even if it doomed me to repeat the endless cycle of _samsara_. I loved him. Had I ever truly stopped?

“Athos!” my name was broken glass upon his lips, and it cut us both. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. "God, will you never forgive me?"

“I’m afraid,” I admitted and he pressed himself into my arms, his body shuddering with an anguish that he fought hard to suppress. My fingers entwined in his long hair and I felt his breath in the crook of my neck. I pressed his face closer and craned my neck against his opened lips until I felt his teeth. 

_This_ , this was the precipice into which we had to step. I had not been strong enough in the past to navigate this mutual addiction. Would I be strong enough now? Would he?

“Take it,” I said, my hand tightening on the nape of his neck. “It’s yours. If you still want it.”

The sound he made was closer to that of a wounded animal than a man and his fingers dug claw-like into my back. His breath came hot and steady against my neck. My blood called out to him again as it did once before. He whimpered softly as his lips traced the outline of my jugular and I shut my eyes, allowing my pulse to become one with his. And then, a soft whisper, like a summer breeze against my skin, “My love,” and the feel of the sharp points of his fangs breaking through my skin.

My arms clasped him tighter but my legs weakened. Blood left me in a rush, as if it had waited for nothing more during the past twenty years than to flow into him again. My heart beat like a terrified bird in the cage of my chest and I sank down to the floor, pulling him with me. My body swelled up beneath the weight of his, hard and tumescent, every cell calling out for his touch. The abyss rose up around us and swallowed us both. 

“I’m yours,” I said, my hand still pressed into the nape of his neck. “Take me to bed, Aramis.”

His lips pressed against mine and I tasted my own blood in his mouth. But no asphodel this time. Just the metallic taste of our covenant. 

“I won’t ever leave you again,” he said, his eyes clouded over with desire. That beautiful monster.

I shook my head. There would be time later for saying what had needed to be said for decades. I took his hand into mine and guided it to where the remains of my blood had pooled, pressing my swollen cock into his grip. 

“Take me to bed,” I repeated. “The rest can wait.”

***

I had been a child in the fog. For how many decades? I didn’t know and it didn’t matter, for the fog had been dispersed as divine light flooded through me once again. The flavour of his blood on my tongue and lips, sweet and metallic at the same time. The taste of life and the taste of battle. The taste of divinity – of true, all-encompassing divinity, not the pale imitation that I had found in the arms of Mother Church. Neither the Jesuits’ learning nor their power, neither the Liturgy nor the burning of heretics made my heart swell and my head spin with unadulterated ecstasy. Athos’ blood did. Once again, I had tasted the light. Once again, I had transformed from Saulus to Paulus.

I clung to him with my lips clamped to his neck and my arms around his body, which throbbed in my embrace. I never doubted his words. He loved me, he _loved_ me; I could smell it in him, I could taste it in his blood.

“Take me to bed,” he whispered, and I wished to oblige, but my own body was shaking too much. We pressed into each other, into the familiar planes and grooves of each other’s bodies, and my senses were filled with him to the brim. If I took him to bed, if I undressed him and shoved my naked body against his – would we not become immolated in our shared bliss? He had demonstrated the power he had over me tonight more than once. He could not kill me like I could kill him. But he could make me burn up from within. I had set myself aflame on my own passions before. If the cold within my soul was set free, it burned parts of me off, like snow and ice burn living flesh off bones.

“Athos,” I choked against the warm skin of his neck. My tongue flicked out and lapped off drops of blood that had gathered in a crease. “Let me…” Let me what? “ _Please._ ”

He understood my inarticulate entreaty, for his arms around me tightened and he rolled his head so that I could press my heated brow into the crook of his neck. From his body into mine, I felt the electricity of life, of power, of divinity strike in devouring flashes into my heart, until its shell of stone began to melt in my chest. It hurt, and I groaned and shuddered, and Athos’ hand alighted on my hair, stroked down my back and pulled me closer. “I love you,” he whispered in Greek. “Aramis.” A soft exhale, his warm breath against my ear. “Aramis. Tell me.”

“I love you,” I whispered back, shaking, for I had to chip it off my heart, tearing down its protective layer with each word. I spoke Greek easily, for it was a language of the Church. But there was something else, something more, and I repeated the words in the old language of my childhood, which I had not spoken in centuries and never spoken to anyone but him. My tongue had become too French to handle the old syllables and they stumbled forth, mutilated and awkward, raw and unrefined. Sincere.

Athos shuddered in my arms and cradled me against him. “Little chyortik,” he muttered, and even that old nickname, childish and familiar of old, melted something within me. He called me his devil, even as I called him my god.

“Take me to bed,” Athos said once again, laughing softly into my neck. He smelled of blood and lust and sweat, and the fabric of his doublet was soft under my fingers. I rubbed my face against his shoulder and closed my eyes. Once we moved, we would have to look at each other’s faces, and I was not yet ready for it.

As ever, it was the Grigori who interfered. There was a creaking and a stomping without, something clattered in the staircase, something banged against the door, and the handle moved. Athos and I drove apart just in time, for the door opened and servants came in, carrying with them a large vat and buckets. The manservant who walked at the head of the procession stopped dead as he caught sight of us, crouched in the middle of the floor, with our cloaks and hats scattered around us. The man’s eye snapped to a discarded glove which bore traces of blood. Athos threw his head back in that imperial gesture that forestalled any impertinent looks and I rose to my feet, pulled out my pocket handkerchief and wiped blood off my fingers.

“Don’t just stand there, imbeciles!” I sneered at them. It was obvious that they thought we had been involved in a duel and that at least one of us was injured.

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur le comte,” the man said. “Monsieur Grimaud had left instructions to have hot water ready for your return.”

“What are you waiting for?” Athos stirred and I stretched out a hand mechanically and pulled him up. His fingers slipped between mine and he squeezed my hand, before disentangling himself again. He stepped away and tugged the collar of his doublet closed that he had opened for me.

I stepped to the window and leaned against the windowsill to conceal the fact that my knees were trembling beneath me, while the servants busied themselves with setting up a bath on the hearth. They kept shooting us furtive looks – no doubt considering the comte de La Fère to be an eccentric of gigantic proportions, who insisted on submerging his whole body into hot water to rid himself off dust and dirt, rather than simply changing his shirt, as was de rigueur in this era in which perfumes replaced soaps.

Athos dismissed the servants with our swords and instructions to have them cleaned and polished by the morrow. “Are you hungry, d’Herblay?” he asked casually without looking at me. “Bring wine and cheese,” he ordered the domestics as they disappeared through the door, and began to unbutton his doublet.

“I’m not hungry.” I kept my voice soft and low, for fear it might otherwise reveal too much.

“You will be,” Athos said.

“Athos,” I whispered, motionless in my spot in the window enclosure. Athos shrugged off his doublet and stepped over to me in his shirtsleeves. The fine cambric of his shirt stuck to his skin, its collar grey with dust and spattered with brown-red stains. It gaped open over his chest where he had unlaced it to let me drink, and I pushed my hand under the fabric and splayed it over his chest.

“It’s safe,” I told him. “I’ll keep it safe. I promise.”

Athos smiled; that ancient smile of his that lit his eyes up from within with Olympian fire and set off a flare inside my skull. I closed my eyes against the light, and then there was warmth and his lips on mine. It was a soft pressure, almost chaste, and I whimpered into it. My lips tingled and he smiled and trailed the tip of his tongue across my tender skin. “We have to wait,” he breathed. “Don’t take your clothes off just yet.” But his hand was meandering over my chest, fingers toying with the buttons of my doublet and we gasped into each other’s lips.

The door creaked, Athos took a step back from me, a tray appeared, accompanied by a maid, who cast a shy glance at the both of us, put our supper down, curtsied and snuck out again. Athos turned away from me, strode across the room and bolted the door. By the time he turned back again, I had ripped off my doublet and was pulling off my boots. “Take your clothes off,” I growled at him. “Water’s getting cold.”

Athos swooped down on me. His mouth, his hands, that firm, unyielding body, hips driving into me as we tugged and pulled, and then I stood naked before him. He never stopped kissing me, not even when we stumbled to the fireplace and were sinking into the warm water, entwined. There were dark smudges on his face where water had mingled with dust and began to streak down, and I lifted my hand and traced a trail along his cheekbone. His lashes fluttered, sooty-black against his pale skin that glowed in candlelight. I pulled him closer and kissed the sharp ridge of his cheekbone. “You’re beautiful.”

“Aramis,” he sighed and opened his eyes. He smiled. “Let me wash your hair.” His fingers woven through my tangled locks, the scent of olive oil as he rubbed Castile soap into my hair and then my skin, washing the dust of the road, the sweat, the rage, off me.

Bit by bit, my shoulders relaxed under his fingers as they kneaded themselves into my corded muscles. As he kneeled behind me, his hands were free to roam my body as they pleased, from my dripping hair, along the curve of my shoulders, into my armpits and down to my hips. He pulled me back against him and rocked into me. One hand slipped around my waist, slithered down my groin and then his fingers were around me and bliss burst through my abdomen. I pushed back into him, moaning, as the grip around my cock tightened.

“Yeah, like that,” he whispered with feverish lips against the nape of my neck. “Fuck yourself on me.” And he sank his teeth in the vertebra at the top of my spine.

I wiped my mouth against my upper arm and felt my muscles tremble as I supported myself with both hands clenched around the rim of our bathtub. “What do you want, Athos?”

“You,” he sighed and kissed my shoulder. “Anything you’re willing to give.”

I turned to face him. Athos’ hair was sopping wet, too, framing his white face, in which shadows pooled beneath the arches of his cheekbones. His mouth was wet and swollen, as if he’d spent the last half an hour sucking my cock, but it was merely from kissing me. The beautiful, broad-shouldered body with its hard muscles under glistening skin. Even as I watched, a rivulet of water ran down his torso and Athos shuddered, goosebumps rose on his chest and arms and his nipples tautened.

“Are you cold?” I flattened my palm over his chest again, over the secret throb of his heart which knocked deep within his breast.

“No.” He pressed his forehead to my shoulder and as I gathered him in my arms, I felt that his skin was chilled. He shivered into me. “Perhaps a bit.” A kiss, scorching my flesh. “Take me to bed, Aramis.”

We lay together in the damp sheets, our legs and hair entangled. Athos’ eyes were half-closed, his hands moved with somnambular confidence over my body, but his soul… I wondered where his soul was, for he appeared transported, like a man in the throes of rapture. His face was that of a god, radiating a light that I could almost see arrange itself into a gloriole. His hair fell around his face in heavy drapes, dripping water on my heated skin. My legs hooked around his, my skin scraping against the hairs on his calves, his cock jabbing into my stomach as he rutted against me.

I turned my head and licked the inside of his wrist, summoning his blood to the surface. Blue veins swelled beneath delicate white skin, Athos’ gasped and his eyes snapped open. “Take it,” he said hoarsely. “It’s yours.” He leaned in and kissed my mouth. “It always was yours.”

I choked out a desperate laugh. His face above me, the expression in his dark eyes, focused on me and unfocused at the same time. The way he looked at me as if I was everything. When I closed my eyes, the memory bubbled up that I had encased in the icy pit of my soul: Athos’ face as he was fucking himself into me, his eyes those of a stranger. His blood had not always been mine. I nudged his fingers with my lips and he pushed one into my mouth and rested the tip gently against my fang. It was mine again; _he_ was mine again, and my fingers dug themselves into the flesh of his loins as I pulled him closer.

The tip of my fang pierced the tip of his finger and a drop of blood blossomed that I lapped off hungrily, closing my eyes against the light that exploded on my tongue. “Can you spend yourself from this?” he whispered. “You could, at one time.”

I opened my eyes. “Can you?”

Athos was smiling. “Drink, Aramis.” He cupped my face, stroking my jaw with his thumb, and twisted his wrist to bring it to my lips again. “Let me see you drink.”

My eyes never leaving his face, I parted my lips over the pulse point that he proffered to me and drilled two neat holes through the skin there. Athos’ eyes went black and he was panting, open-mouthed, staring at me, watching me suck out his life essence in greedy gulps. He shifted his weight atop me, and suddenly there was his hand: a slim finger between my legs, slick and dexterous, pushing and probing, until my thighs fell open for him and I slanted my hips to grant him access. His finger slipped in and we both groaned and arched into each other. The nectar in my mouth, Athos’ finger stretching me, gentle as always, and then he moved his hand and light exploded behind my eyes once again. As I gasped for air, his blood gushed into my throat and I almost choked. I swallowed convulsively, scalding my lips on Athos’ wrist. The divine light was burning from inside his veins, as they replenished themselves even as I drank from him. His body was alive with celestial energy, the finger inside me pushed in deeper, another burst of light inside my head and my groin, and I was spending myself, shaking and clinging to Athos, momentarily blind with euphoria.

He was whispering something into my ear, muttering words that didn’t penetrate the fog in my mind, but which I knew to be words of love. Beneath the gentle swipes of my tongue, his torn skin healed. He pulled his hand back and kissed my mouth. He pulled his finger out and I hissed at the loss. Athos was lifting himself above me, straddling my groin, straddling my chest, and he slid his cock over my blood-stained lips.

The salt of the ocean blended with the sweetness of Olympian nectar. I opened my mouth for him to fuck himself into. His hand in my hair as he balanced above me, his thick cock in my mouth, pressing down on my tongue, and I sucked it in like I had sucked his blood. Athos swore and cried out. His cock jolted, his thighs clamped around my ribcage, and he spilled himself messily in my mouth, on my lips, on my chin and neck, into my hair, as his seed mingled with his blood and dripped down my face.

I forced my heavy eyelids open and blinked up to him.

“So beautiful,” Athos was saying. He dragged his thumb over my lower lip and carried it to his mouth, licking his essence off his own digit.

“Come here.” I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him down, until he rested with his head on my shoulder.

“I want you so much,” he mumbled into my collarbone. I could tell by the way his limbs grew heavier and his body grew softer that Hypnos was claiming him already.

“You have me,” I whispered back. “I’m yours.”

Where his arm lay across my chest, his stomach against my groin, his leg slung over my thigh, his skin was glued to mine. Beneath his weight, my body felt frail and soft. It had turned into a gelatinous mass that melted into the mattress and moulded itself to Athos. His hand brushed against mine, our fingers threaded through each other. He was holding me and a faint gleam of light behind my closed eyelids spoke of divine presence. I pressed my lips to his forehead and let his heartbeat guide mine.

***

I lay glued with my mouth to his hair when my stomach rumbled and I opened one eye, casting an accusatory look around the room. My limbs felt heavy and well-used, my body seemed gripped in a pleasant fever. I tried to move my arms, finding them entwined and underneath Aramis’ body.

“Mmmm,” I inhaled the natural sweetness of his skin. “Good morning, angel.” My heart knocked loudly inside my ribcage.

“My love,” he whispered back, lips seeking mine instinctively. Had he slept? Had he dreamed? Regardless, he was still there, in my bed, and that was a pleasure I had not awoken to in quite a bit longer than I cared to remember.

“My angel,” I repeated, burrowing, not wanting to let him go. Not ever again. His body pressed up against me and I felt it quiver with a laughter of warmth.

I felt drunk. My head swam. My limbs were sluggish and unruly. All I wanted was to press my mouth to every part of his body. His thighs parted under mine, falling open like the gates of Elysium, erasing all memory, all doubt from my mind exactly the same way.

“Aramis,” I exhaled, my hands already kneading at the flesh of his ass.

“How did the gods make you so beautiful?” His black eyes, pools of endless desire. His fingers pressed against my mouth and I sucked them in slowly. Traces of our coupling still covered the hollow of his neck, marking his skin where it dried into a pale shadow. I was wordless in his arms. “Take me.”

“Oh, yes.”

Through the haze of my love-born inebriation, I managed to ease my way inside him, slowly and carefully, until we commingled our moans, breathing fast into each other’s mouths. Too much and not enough, simultaneously. I drowned in him. And if my love was an ocean, then surely I would drown him in it with me.

“I’m yours,” he repeated the words from the previous night.

“You are,” I breathed heavily. I could not stop kissing him, his lips turned to swollen, bitten berries underneath the assault of my lips and teeth. “My angel, my sweet angel.” 

I had given him my blood and he had given me back his body. Suddenly, I felt like universal order had been restored.

Why had it taken me so long?

I rocked into him, my rhythm building to a crescendo, each thrust meant to shake unwanted parts of the past from his memory. His thighs trembled around me with mounting anticipation. The all-consuming heat from his body immolated my last cogent thought.

He cried out against me and splattered my stomach and chest with his seed, massaging it into my damp hair and skin with ravenous hands, as if trying to mark me against all others. Feral and beautiful love of my over-long existence. I came inside him, feeling all too close to the rapture and Nirvana at the same time. What would Jesus do? What would Buddha say? I did not give two shits. All I wanted was _him_ : near me, beside me, around me, within me, everywhere.

He had dragged last night’s bread and cheese tray into the bed and was feeding me with a look of benevolent concentration on his face. The bread had lost its freshness and the cheese seemed a bit too ripe but I ate it from his fingers as if it was ambrosia.

“My godling worked up quite the appetite,” he smiled and kissed me on the ridge of my nose.

“You have no idea.”

I do not recall much of the days that followed, except that I would not be parted from him. At some point, we ended up at the Hermitage on rue de La Monnaie with d’Artagnan and Porthos, although truth be told, I still have no idea how we got there or whose idea it was. Aramis maintains to this day it was my own, but only because he never would have admitted to any blatant overtures of friendship towards the Gascon. But, be it so, he was in an extremely genial mood and it spilled well into our supper. At one point, I do recall his looks of astonishment upon my ordering of champagne.

“You’ve started drinking again too,” I whispered in his ear and his fingers sank into the flesh of my thigh under the table. Across from us, Porthos raised an eyebrow.

I remember Aramis undoing two buttons on his doublet, a moment when my gaze lingered on the exposed chemise and my mind stilled, and the rest of dinner is an uneventful blur.

Allow me to correct myself: it was an uneventful blur until Grimaud arrived, dusty from the road, his face blanched and drenched in perspiration, and wielding a bloody knife (which Aramis later told me he expected to have thrown in his own face for some obscure reason).

"Your honors," Grimaud declaimed with that same dramatic flare that he generally brought to my existence, "that woman had a child; that child has become a man; the tigress had a little one, the tiger has roused himself; he is ready to spring upon you--beware!"

We returned to my house on rue Guénégaud in a fit of giggles that were just as much a result of intoxication as they were of anticipation.

“Was that really necessary?” I asked Grimaud. “Why did you have to bring the bloody knife to dinner?”

“Kyrios, are you in your cups again?” He cast a suspicious look at Aramis, who dangled off my arm with barely tethered glee. Our eyes met and we laughed again.

“Why don’t you go turn down my bed and make yourself useful,” I suggested.

“He is ready to spring upon you,” Aramis purred into my ear and nibbled on it while quoting the Grigori, “Beware!”

“Poor dear Grimaud, he has no idea what a nasty trick life has played on him,” I laughed, pulling Aramis closer, my lips sealed against his own while his fingers fumbled with my collar to expose my neck. “He doesn’t deserve this,” I mumbled and pressed his face into my neck, just as a cry of wretched heartbreak reached us from the bedroom.

Grimaud had found the bloodied linen.

I held Aramis close as his body shook with silent laughter and I bit my own lips to keep myself from laughing aloud.

“Zeus’ and Hades’ balls, Kyrios!” the Grigori stormed out of the room, waving the bloodied sheets in front of my face. “You had such a good twenty years!”

“It’s about to get so much better,” I grinned impishly.

“Perhaps not for you, Grimaud,” Aramis added, narrowing his eyes in that way that reminded me of a kitten, his arms still draped around my neck.

My beleaguered Grigori went off, muttering to himself with an air of purest despondency, while I threaded my fingers through Aramis’ hair and pulled him in for a searching kiss.

“I think he secretly really likes you,” I said when our lips parted.


End file.
